How do organizations use the CCAT®?

Determining strengths and identifying opportunities

Built on decades of experience and research in capacity building, the Core Capacity Assessment Tool (CCAT) measures a nonprofit’s effectiveness in relation to four core capacities – leadership, adaptability, management, and technical capacity – as well as organizational culture. The CCAT is intended to help a nonprofit organization determine its strengths and opportunities for improvement within each of these key components. Foundations, corporate funders, and management support organizations (MSOs) may purchase the CCAT as a service for their grantees, or as a tool for determining their long-term capacity-building needs. The CCAT is not, however, used by funders as a screening tool to determine which organizations to support.

Engaging and planning

The CCAT is completed by all key senior leaders (including one to two board members) of an organization. The assessment culminates with a final report that provides nonprofits with an analysis of strengths and challenges in the core capacities and sub-capacities, as well as prioritized and detailed suggestions and resources for building organizational capacity and increasing organizational effectiveness. The CCAT report can be used in a variety of ways as an engagement and planning tool, including as a frame for strategic planning, and a way to monitor organizational growth and development.

Turning assessment into action

Once your nonprofit has assessed its capacity, how can your leadership move from assessment to action? At TCC Group, we believe that data alone does not help a nonprofit build its capacity. The CCAT’s strength is amplified by an interpretation session, where a neutral third-party facilitator can help contextualize the CCAT report and explore what it means to each organization.

CCAT interpretation sessions include a facilitated conversation with all who have taken the CCAT, led by a skilled TCC consultant. During this conversation, your survey results are analyzed, interpreted, and discussed with your organization’s leadership so that you may gain valuable insight into the needs of your organization across key capacity metrics.

Interpretation sessions can be provided as one-on-one sessions with the leadership of a nonprofit, or can be conducted with groups of nonprofits or grantee cohorts that exhibit similar levels of assessed capacity.