Feeding America, the nation’s network of food banks, sought to assess the organizational capacity of its 200+ members in order to design and deliver capacity building services through its national office. The OCAT was its tool of choice in large part because of the tool’s ability to strengthen capacity while assessing it (through the grid content and the process), aligning key organizational stakeholders behind a clear set of capacity building priorities.
In 2009, Feeding America engaged Blueprint Research + Design, Inc. to modify the OCAT to address both core organizational competencies and those capacities specific to food banking organizations. In addition to working with a group of food banking professionals to develop new content for those capacities specific to organizations in this network, Blueprint updated the content in the OCAT to better reflect current expectations in capacity, paying specific attention to elements related to information and communication technology where significant changes have taken place since the tool was originally released.
The final product, titled the “Feeding America Capacity Self-Assessment Tool” (“CSAT”) is a web-based tool and process, administered in the first quarter of 2010. Participation in the Capacity Self-Assessment Tool and process was voluntary for Feeding America members. Ultimately 143 of the network’s 202 member organizations opted in during the data collection period, engaging 1,054 individuals (including 230 board members) in self-assessing member food bank capacity and agreeing upon a set of ratings and capacity building priorities for their organizations.
Though the online version of the tool is currently only accessible to Feeding America members, the PDF version and its content is accessible to all.