Organizational Assessments
Spur’s assessment process is designed to determine your organization's overall strengths through a life-cycle lens and to help better illuminate and clarify the goals, programs, and priorities of your organization.
How it Works
Assessment survey
Nonprofits being by completing an assessment survey covering different areas of operations including strategic and annual planning, programs and services, finances, Board and executive leadership, fundraising and marketing, and best practices.
Debrief meeting
Following the completion of the assessment survey, Spur meets with executive director, board president and other members of the board or staff as appropriate to ensure Spur has a solid understanding of your work, organizational needs, and opportunities, as well as your highest priorities for funding.
Grants and donors
The understanding we gain through this assessment process is the baseline from which we can consider making impactful grants to your organization and introducing you to donors in our network whose interests align with your work. Every 2-3 years, we invite nonprofits to update their responses, through an abbreviated process, so that our understanding stays current.
FAQs About the Spur Assessment Process
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Receiving feedback on your organization's health from the perspective of an investment-minded funder.
A tool that can identify organizational areas that may need to be strengthened and help align the Executive Director and Board around internal priorities.
A checklist that can serve as a roadmap for achieving the best practices that characterize well-run nonprofits.
Completion of the assessment is a great way to build a relationship with Spur that ensures we have a solid understanding of your work, needs, and impact.
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Completing an assessment form (or an abbreviated form if you've already gone through the process once) through Spur's grant portal.
Attending a debrief meeting with Spur’s Executive Director, staff, and a few of Spur Board Members and/or Advisors. The goal of the debrief is to meet with the nonprofit's leadership team to review the assessment, answer questions, and gain a deeper knowledge of the nonprofit's work as well as answer any questions about Spur.
Identifying and possibly requesting follow-up advisory services.
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To gain the level of understanding that enables us to properly introduce your work to potential donors.
To identify opportunities for collaboration.
To identify opportunities to provide any advisory services or training we offer that would benefit your organization.
To identify overarching trends and needs in the local nonprofit sector.
To inform its grantmaking.
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Before starting the process, we highly recommend reaching out to a Spur staff member.
1. To start the application go to Spur's grant portal.
2. Log in or create an account.
3. Click 'Apply' in the upper left-hand corner of your screen.
4. Scroll down until you see the Spur Assessment Survey or Updated Assessment Survey
5. Click 'Apply' in the upper right-hand corner of the opportunity.
6. If you have any questions, email Alison at alison@spurfoundation.org.
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We welcome your feedback as we continually strive to make the online grant application and reporting process as efficient as possible. To share comments, please email npservices@spurfoundation.org.