Cooperative Capacity Assessment

A free online self-assessment with optional support from Cooperative Capacity Partners.

This assessment is for managers that need to partner with other organizations to meet their mission and vision.

Even after assessing technical and financial capacity, managers considering a partnership typically still find it risky because of difficulty in
assessing how the partners will actually work together.

• Does each potential partner have the management capacity to collaborate in the partnership?
• Will my proposed partners respect my autonomy, vision and mission?
• How will information flow within the partnership? Will my organization be listened to?
• How will decision making be made after the partnership is formed? Will my organization be included in a meaningful way?
• Will the proposed partners follow through on decisions made?

This assessment will help managers pursuing partnership arrangements to analyze, anticipate, and plan for behaviors of potential partners.

At the end of the assessment, you will likely be able to:

• Estimate the performance of the partners and the potential performance of the partnership
• Estimate the potential highest level of collaboration of the partnership, including
  • Who and how decisions can be made in the partnership (for example, will decisions be made by only one partner? Or is there the potential for the partnership to become more collaborative and share decision making?)
  • The ability of each partner to delegate and share responsibility
  • The potential direction and flow of information within the partnership (will information flow at all, only one direction, or two ways?)
  • The implications the power differential between the partners will have on sharing power, making decisions, and the flow of information
• Understand how each of the partner organizations makes decisions (the level of decision making)
• Understand how information flows within each of the partner organizations (does information only flow down, or both up and down, or in every direction as necessary?)

1. Introduction – 5 minutes
2. Assess yourself as a partner – 15 minutes
3. Assess one of your potential partners – 15 minutes
4. Read results – 10 minutes