Consider applying to McKinsey's free-for-nonprofits org health survey (by April 14)

tl;dr: McKinsey is offering its Organizational Health Index survey free to nonprofits through April 14 March 31. Outputs of the OHI include benchmarks and best-practice recommendations for improving work environment, governance, etc. Link to apply.

Disclosure: I worked at McKinsey London from Nov 2020-June 2022 in the organization, strategy, and digital/analytics practices. These are my personal opinions formed individually.

What is the organizational health index?

A tool for benchmarking how healthy organizations are. It incorporates nine dimensions of organizational health, including both internal factors (e.g., quality of work environment) and external factors (e.g., position within ecosystem).

The OHI also provides recommendations for how to improve an organization's health going forward (including webinars explaining best practices).

Why would a nonprofit want to benchmark its organizational health?

Healthier organizations are more capable of achieving their missions. They have mission clarity, effective leadership, a work environment that leads to higher performance and great staff development, processes that support effective management, and the capabilities to execute on their goals; they innovate more and more often, and they contribute more to the broader ecosystem of which they're a part.

Healthier nonprofits also tend to have better staff outcomes: retaining them for longer, engaging them more fully, and being recommended more highly by them.

Although most EA organizations have clear missions and highly engaged staff, they may benefit from understanding where there are opportunities to grow - for example, by implementing mechanisms to develop their staff further, manage risk, or partner effectively.

Benchmarking can help with this, as it aggregates experiences from many different organizations in the public, private, and social sectors. McKinsey's org practice has expertise in managing large and small organizations, so their benchmarking tool's outputs, appropriately tailored to the context of EA nonprofits, may be useful.

What are the costs?

Money: zero (as long as you're a qualifying nonprofit)

Time: 10 hours for a project manager, plus 20-30 mins per employee taking the survey

Privacy: Deidentified results from many different organizations get aggregated into future versions of the benchmark

Which nonprofits are eligible?

Per the website (emphasis mine): 

• "Nonprofits must have at least 20 staff members to participate (i.e., full-time and part-time staff and contractors working in a staff augmentation capacity, who are responsible for core operations).
• Nonprofits may not be hospitals or healthcare systems, universities, lobbying organizations, or government- or state-owned entities.
• Nonprofits must pass a screening against standard international Watchlists and Sanctions lists.
• Nonprofits must be able to allocate a Project Manager who is proficient in English to run the OHI and who can dedicate ~10 hours from application form until survey closure (e.g., to set up the survey, share survey communications, send follow-up emails to staff to increase participation). Example Project Managers could include HR colleagues or dedicated PMs within the nonprofit."

What's the process to get started?

• Before April 14 March 31, have your organization's HR director or equivalent visit this link and fill in the application: https://www.mckinsey.org/ohi-for-nonprofits
  • EDIT: Noticed the website announced a deadline extension to April 14. From a quick scan, it looks like the application takes ~10-20 minutes.
• Appoint a project manager internally to run the survey
• Run the survey
• Receive results
• Prioritize actions to take on the basis of the organization's results