Impact & Operations Assessment

As fiscal sponsors advocate for their various needs (funding, new projects, board/staff recruitment, etc.) being able to define, track, and articulate impact on constituent projects is critical. Understanding and setting strategic goals around organizational health and performance is equally important. We support our Organization Members on an annual basis in both of these areas of assessment.

Impact

Most sponsors are home to a diversity of missions, each with their own theories of change and impact models. This makes defining a single or unified expression of impact for the sponsor challenging at the project level. However, the work the sponsor performs to support their projects tends to be more common from project to project, such as financial and HR management, compliance, risk management, legal support, and so on. Thus, sponsors can (and should!) define, track, and report key impact data for their work as a foundational element of community accountability and organizational advocacy. Our Impact Tracker looks at such data as:

  • Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access

  • Key Financial Activity Indicators

  • Employment & Economic Impact

  • Overhead/Back Office Efficiency

  • Project Personnel Wellbeing

Health

Closely related to organizational impact is organizational health: how well are you operating? Are you meeting strategic goals and delivering the support the way you intend? While impact is more of an outward-looking set of metrics, organizational health looks more inward at overall organizational performance. Our Health Tracker is organized according to the three key areas of commoning practice:

Commons Resources

  • Clarity and transparency in defining services and shared resources

  • Commitment to practices that foster access, equity, diversity, and inclusion

  • Key financial performance indicators and overall portfolio management

  • Staff and team compensation, wellbeing, retention, and development

  • Quality, consistency, and resiliency of systems: people, plant, and technology

Peer Governance

  • Level of direct involvement of constituents (project leadership) in governance

  • Level of involvement of constituents in key management and business decisions

  • Overall transparency around policies, practices, and risk factors

  • Level of mutual trust between project leadership, board, and staff

  • Governance effectiveness and transparency in process and decision making

Community & Learning

  • Fostering and articulating shared values and commitments within your community

  • Commitment to anti-oppression and restorative practices with your projects

  • Facilitating connections and relationship building among projects and stakeholders

  • Dedication to ongoing learning among projects, staff, and board alike

  • Level of involvement in and sharing with the fiscal sponsorship community at large