Standards for Excellence Self-Assessment
This Standards for Excellence free online self-assessment helps nonprofits measure their organization’s adherence to the benchmarks in the Standards for Excellence: An Ethics and Accountability Code for the Nonprofit Sector. The assessment offers a series of questions about the nonprofits’ governance and management practices. Once a nonprofit leader completes the assessment questionnaire, a professional report is generated that helps the organization to identify areas where work needs to be completed in order to apply for Standards for Excellence accreditation.
No. It is free.
A nonprofit will need 20 to 30 minutes at a minimum to complete the self-assessment.
Nonprofit leaders often find that they may need to check with colleagues in their organization to complete the self-assessment. As a result, the self-assessment sometimes cannot be completed in one sitting. Nonprofit leaders can save their work and return to the self-assessment at any time.
When a nonprofit completes the self-assessment, it will receive a report that documents how their organization currently measures up with respect to meeting all the benchmarks and suggests Standards for Excellence Institute resources that can assist the organization in reaching full adherence to the Standards for Excellence code.
Many nonprofits share the report with their staff or board leadership and use it to define and prioritize action areas.
Nonprofits often use the report as a first step towards Standards for Excellence accreditation since it clearly lays out areas that need attention from the organization.
An organization’s results will be shared with the Standards for Excellence Institute but will not be released unless it provides permission to do so. Results may be reported in the aggregate without identifying the organizations participating.