Oxfam Canada’s Capacity Assessment Evaluation Report

Oxfam Canada focuses on organizational capacity strengthening because we believe that strong women’s rights organizations and civil society organizations are key agents of change in achieving gender justice and human rights. We consider there to be an inherent link between programming and organizational capacities, where organizations can do better work with their communities when their own internal structures, processes, and work are more sustainable, gender-just and democratic.

In 2009, Oxfam Canada piloted a set of tools with diverse civil society partners, including a self-directed Capacity Assessment Tool. Our experience and feedback received from partners encouraged us to share them widely and led to their formalization through the development of Oxfam Canada's "The Power of Gender-Just Organizations: A Conceptual Framework for Transformative Organizational Capacity- Building", and "The Power of Gender-Just Organizations: Toolkit for Transformative Organizational Capacity-Building". From 2017-2019, Oxfam Canada also developed additional Capacity Assessment Tools focusing specifically on organizations that work to end violence against women and girls and organizations that promote sexual and reproductive health and rights.

In 2020, Oxfam Canada commissioned an evaluation of the Capacity Assessment Tool, the report of which is available here, as is the Management Response to the evaluation.