The Nonprofit Capacity Instrument is a free, confidential assessment backed by science. Nonprofit leaders, foundations, and consultants can use the instrument with confidence. We offer two versions of the same instrument.
The paper version of the instrument is perfect for students, researchers, or foundation leaders who need to distribute their own surveys. The instrument is free to use (with attribution) and we welcome questions about the instrument.
The online benchmarking tools is perfect for nonprofit organizations that want to assess their capacity and compare it to over 1000 other nonprofit organizations who have completed the survey. You’ll receive a customized report with your scores, benchmarks from similar organizations, and resources to build your capacity.
Foundation Resources
Are you a funder who would like to use the Nonprofit Capacity Instrument for your grantees or as a part of your capacity-building program? We’ve built a set of resources just for you. They include flyers to share, a ready-to-use PowerPoint deck, and a FAQ that answers common questions from nonprofits.
Backed By Evidence
In 2017, we published the Nonprofit Capacity Instrument in Nonprofit Management and Leadership. It’s a self-administered survey 45-item instrument that reliably measures. We based the instrument on two studies that took all of the items from several existing capacity measures and subjected them to statistical scrutiny. The resulting Nonprofit Capacity Instrument is the only reliable and valid instrument available today.
