Network Effectiveness Diagnostic and Development Tool: Overview

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Network Effectiveness Diagnostic and Development
Tool Overview

• Description This diagnostic is a short tool for
  identifying your network strengths and
  weaknesses, and exploring actions to take to
  develop or strengthen your network. Information
  in the diagnostic portion of the tool is a
  synthesis of what we know about characteristics
  of healthy networks, from multiple sources. The
  network development portion of the tool offers a
  menu of potential actions for strengthening
  networks. It outlines a range of interventions
  that have proved helpful to networks, but the
  list of actions is, by no means comprehensive.
• Audience Any nonprofit / individual working
  within or through a network.
• Instructions
• Begin by identifying your network as either
• BOUNDED a network with clear boundaries. The
  participants are known.
• UNBOUNDED a network with fuzzy boundaries. The
  participants are not all known.
• Then, take the diagnostic. Rate your network
  (high, medium, low) against attributes within
  eight commonly agreed areas of network health.
  You can then step back and give yourself an
  overall rating for that area. Any area where you
  scored the network low or medium might be
  considered a priority area for network
  development.
• Elicit multiple perspectives on your networks
  health. Ask several participants and/or leaders
  from across your network to take the diagnostic.
  Then compare and aggregate results.
• Next, link your priority areas with actions for
  strengthening networks. The actions are by no
  means prescriptive and do not correlate directly
  to the attributes within each area of network
  health. They are meant to spur your thinking
  about the range of specific steps you might take
  to strengthen your network.
• Caution
• Depending on where your network is at in its
  lifecycle, different attributes may be at
  different levels of priority. For example, you
  may be a very young network with minimal systems
  for assessing impact. For many young networks,
  having only nascent systems and metrics for
  assessing impact is appropriate in this case,
  you should focus your next steps less on impact
  assessment and more on areas like purpose and
  leadership.
• Sources In addition to our conversations and
  work with network leaders and a needs assessment
  survey we did for Packard Foundation network
  grantees in the spring of 08, we have drawn on
  the work of several network experts to develop
  this diagnostic tool. Beth Kanters insights on
  network communications (check out her blog
  http//beth.typepad.com), June Holleys work on
  network weaving (check out her blog
  www.networkweaving.com/blog/), Marty Kearns
  Advocacy 2.0 training materials
  (www.advocacy2.org), Plastrik and Taylors
  manuscript, Net Gains A Handbook for Network
  Builders Seeking Social Change (2006), Clay
  Shirkys book, Here Comes Everybody (2008), and
  Jane Wei-Skillern and Sonia Marcianos paper,
  The Networked Nonprofit (2008) have all been
  particularly informative.

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Diagnostic Tool for Bounded Networks
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Development Tool for Bounded Networks
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Diagnostic Tool for Unbounded Networks
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Development Tool for Unbounded Networks