Organisation Self-Assessment

Organisations rarely have the time to pause and reflect on their capacity to carry out their goals or strategically develop plans to strengthen their organisations capacity. Our Feminist Organisational Capacity Strengthening (FOCS) organisational self-assessment workshop provides an opportunity to do exactly that. 

Our Feminist Organisational Capacity Strengthening approach to Organisation Self-Assessment is based on the following principles: 

  • Strengthening women’s organisations is important because they are crucial in maintaining and widening the space for voice, visibility, and rights of diverse women and girls
  • Stronger women’s rights organisations are better able to establish, participate in and strengthen vital, vocal and visible feminist movements
  • Organisations can address many of the challenges they face through an approach to organisational capacity strengthening based on feminist principles like intersectionality, challenging and redistributing power, deep democracy, the personal is political, non-violence & respect for the earth.
  • Recognising and challenging unequal power relations in internal organisational culture and practices will make us better prepared to recognise and transform power relations in society
  • The wisdom is in the room. The solutions and creative ideas to address your organisational strengthening needs already exist in your organisation. 


Workshop Details

Time required: 14 Hours (4 x 3.5 Hour Sessions over 2, 3 or 4 days)
Price: $11,500 For A Group Up to 15 

What does the workshop cover?  

The workshop will guide you and your team through a process to reflect on your organisational capacity using a number of analytical frameworks: 

  • Power dynamics like power-over, power-with, power-within and power-under
     
  • Feminist principles like intersectionality, challenging and redistributing power, deep democracy, the personal is political, non-violence & respect for the earth.
     
  • The Five Capabilities Framework, which defines five categories of organisational capacity including the capability to: carry out technical and service delivery & logistical tasks; relate and attract resources; balance diversity & coherence; adapt and self-renew; and commit & engage.
     
  • The Gender at Work analytical framework which defines four spheres of transformative change within organisations: Resources & Opportunities; Formal Rules and Policies; Consciousness & Capabilities; Informal Norms & Exclusionary Practices.  

Groups will be supported, in a safe and fun environment, to reflect on how these principles might be translated into practice, so the organisation can become the ‘next best version of itself’.   

Learning outcomes 

By the end of the workshop you and your colleagues will have: 

  • Engaged with feminist principles and power analysis frameworks and how they apply to your organisation
  • Learnt about a variety of evidence based, power aware organisational capacity strengthening framework
  • Undertaken a guided collective reflection on current organisational strengths and areas for improvement based on a power analysis, feminist principles and evidence based organisational capacity framework
  • Identified strategic priorities for capacity strengthening that will support your organisation to more fully align its practice with gender justice and feminist principles
  • Developed a concrete, actionable plan for capacity strengthening at your organisation
  • Developed a plan to track progress over time 


Who is this workshop for?  

This workshop is ideally suited to organisations, groups, teams or collectives who have a desire to more closely align their organisational systems, strategies and culture with women’s rights and feminist principles. 

About the facilitator  

Bronwyn Tilbury is the Feminist Movement Strengthening Advisor at IWDA. She identifies as a queer, cis-gendered, white woman from the minority world/global north. Bronwyn has worked with women’s rights organisations across the Oceanic Pacific and Southeast Asia for more than a decade to support their organisational and movement strengthening capacity. She has facilitated diverse groups across the region using feminist facilitation principles to create safe spaces for transformative conversations and outcomes.  

What are people saying about this workshop? 

“Great balance of dreaming, honest reflection, and action-planning. Extremely useful and positively facilitated.”

“The best thing about this workshop was the time and space to come together across teams. Having this process externally facilitated with clear take away actions at the end.  The breakout sessions were great to discuss what’s working well, what can be improved and our big picture dreaming”

“The best thing about this workshop was the opportunity to step outside of business as usual activities and discuss longer term goals that we as an organisation share.”

“The facilitation was warm, mindful and humorous which meant people were comfortable to speak openly.”