Organizational Assessment Tools and Resources
Overview
Organizational assessment is similar to community assessment, though power dynamics around information are likely more concentrated, and perhaps more hierarchical – for example, there may be very little publicly available information and people asked to provide information may feel the stakes are higher in terms of job loss or other negative consequences. Confidentiality is important for both types of assessment. Promises made about who sees the data, in what form and with what types of identifying information have to be kept.
Organizational assessments are often looking at internal processes as much as outcomes. For example, it is often useful to look deeply at decision-making: What information do decision-makers get and from whom? Which voices or sources of information have credence? Whose perspectives have the most credence? What gets discounted or devalued in the process? How are decisions communicated? What are the impacts of current decision-making processes, and do they vary by racial/ethnic group within the organization or among the external groups whose lives the organization effects?
Similar assessments can be done for each of the major aspects an organizations work and its internal policies and practices. In doing these assessments, it is very useful to look at the existence and impact of white culture. And, people with different roles and identities within the organization should review each area of an organization’s internal and external practices.
This section includes resources about the processes of organizational assessment, tools and examples of organizational assessments.
Tools
- Advancing the Mission: Tools for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
- Assessing Organizational Racism
- Becoming a Catalyst for Social Justice: A Tool For Aligning Internal Operations to Produce Progress
- Concentric Circles: Unpacking Privilege and Power
- Frameworks & Approaches, Understanding Racial Inequities in Policies, Programs & Grantmaking-Racial Equity Campaign
- Moving a Racial Justice Agenda: Organizational Assessment: Are you ready
- Social Service and Social Change: A Process Guide
- Racial Equity Toolkit: To Assess Policies, Initiatives, Programs and Budget Issues
- TOCAR Collaborative Campus and Community Climate Survey for Students
- Race Matters Toolkit
- Building Organizational Capacity for Social Justice
- Local Health Department Organizational Self-Assessment for Addressing Health Inequities: Toolkit
- Racial Justice Assessment Tool
- Ready for Equity in Workforce Development: Racial Equity Readiness Assessment Tool
- Racial and Social Equity Assessment Tool for Farm to School Programs and Policy
- Racial Equity Toolkit: Applying a Racial Equity Lens to your Organization
- Equity Audit
- Transforming Organizational Culture Assessment Tool (TOCA)
Resources
- Service Delivery and Social Change: 2010 Convening Report
- White Supremacy Culture
- City of Seattle Racial Equity Community Survey
- Freedom Forecast: An Organizational Assessment and Strategic Plan to Move Black Liberation Forward
- Calling In: A Quick Guide on When and How
- Measuring Love in the Journey for Justice: A Brown Paper
- Using Human Rights Assessments in Local Governance: A Toolkit for State and Local Human Rights and Human Relations Commission
