How can you ensure over time that your institution is managed in an efficient and effective way?
The board of directors and the executive manager are responsible for monitoring the management and operation of the institution, analysing mistakes or negative results and initiating improvement actions.
Internal evaluation only serves the purpose to understand and improve the management of the institution, i.e., the planning, organisation, administration, execution and control of all activities. Besides financial analysis and staff feed-back, the management will use internal checklists to monitor different aspects of the institution’s management and operations.
A series of internal checklists has been developed by the “United Way of Minneapolis Area”. The author considers the checklists as very useful as they require standards and good practices that have also been used in this Guide. We refer to these checklists as templates (focus on US non-profit organisations) that would need to be adapted by your institution to the regulatory framework and country conditions given.
The checklists use indicators that should represent what is most important to have a well-managed organisation. All indicators are rated according to their importance for good management:
E = essential requirement for all non-profit organisations, these requirements should be met.
R = recommended as standard practice for effective non-profits.
A = additional indicators which demonstrate an enhanced status.
The institution management will answer for every indicator if it is considered to be met, if it needs work or if this indicator is not considered suitable/applicable for the institution.
The responses should be reviewed by the board of directors and necessary improvement actions should be developed. The executive management should also adapt the checklists to the country conditions and the institution in order to make it a reliable monitoring instrument.
Template internal evaluation checklists.
Source: United Way of Minneapolis Area
Checklist for an Assessment of Legal Activities (strong US focus)
Checklist to Evaluate a Non-profit Board of Directors
Checklist of Human Resources Management
Checklist for the Assessment of Business Planning (strategic) and Operational Planning
Checklist to Assess Financial Activities (see also Guidelines & Financial Controls)