Since 2001, Eurasia Foundation has worked to assure the sustainability of its operations throughout the former Soviet Union by transferring ownership of strategy, finances and programs to local staff in an effort to establish self-sustaining institutions based on the EF model of success. To this end, four partner foundations were launched: the New Eurasia Foundation (FNE), serving Russia, in 2004; Eurasia Foundation of Central Asia (EFCA) in 2006; and in 2007 the East Europe Foundation (EEF), serving Ukraine, and the Eurasia Partnership Foundation (EPF) in the South Caucasus.
In order to help these new institutions grow into powerful change agents, EF and its partners developed the Capacity Mapping Initiative (CMI). CMI is a means of tracking the growth of an institution by measuring its progress in six key areas that EF and its partners believe are critical for organizational success:
Board Governance
Fundraising
Program Management
Financial Management
Communications
Human Resources and Staff Development
CMI employs a diagnostic approach to evaluate the current capacity of a particular foundation in each of these areas to determine a path for growth and to measure achievement along the way. By providing verifiable measures of operational capacity within each of the key areas, this tool provides detailed insight into where the organization’s systems are producing results and where the organization should invest more resources.
Ten competency stages within each key area form the basis of a capacity building map for an organization. After identifying where a particular foundation currently stands, the maps help to indicate the critical milestones that the foundation should pass on its path to organizational growth.
Eurasia Foundation has long been a leader in organizational development in the Eurasia region and with its Capacity Mapping Initiative, EF has pioneered an innovative and effective way to measure the maturation of its partner foundations and help ensure that they thrive.
