“‘Nobody asks you what you need.’”
Amigos of Costa Rica Affiliate Coordinator Adriana Alfaro says that unfortunately, this is a common refrain within the community nonprofit sector when navigating training resources—and something Amigos is determined to change for its affiliates. That’s what drove Amigos to carry out an in-depth self-assessment for its approximately 125 affiliates earlier this year, generating feedback that is already shaping Amigos’s new training program.
Adriana, a longtime nonprofit leader in Costa Rica who interacted with Amigos for years as an affiliate before joining the team in 2024, worked with Executive Director Emily Arnold to develop the self-guided assessment. Users answered 46 multiple-choice questions where each answer represented an increasing level of development and expertise in one of five key areas: Project Management, Board of Directors, Fundraising, Marketing & Communications, and Financial Management. All active affiliates completed the assessment in January 2025 as part of the annual reporting process, and it’s now part of the onboarding process for new affiliates as well.
As Adriana explains, it’s much more than a one-time effort to gather input for training development: it’s also a tool that can help all affiliates understand their strengths and areas for improvement, and track their progress over time.
Adriana spoke with me over Zoom about the process. Excerpts follow, edited for clarity.
Was this the first time that Amigos has done something like this at this scale?
Yes. Amigos has offered trainings over the years, and I participated in some during my years as an affiliate, but this was the first time [we undertook] a bigger project when it came to really seeing in detail what our affiliates actually wanted to be trained on. That was the main objective of the needs assessment, versus us saying, "I think they need to know how to make an ask." Oftentimes, nonprofits are just offered training and opportunities, but we wanted to make it as strategic as possible.
We have limited resources, and we want to make sure that if we're doing training, it is training that they will appreciate; that they will attend; and that will have an impact on their development as organizations.
When it comes to our affiliates, we're not just guessing. We're not here to pretend that we have the magic recipe for everything. That's why we asked them first, what do you need? Assess yourself, and then we will respond to that assessment instead of telling you what you need to do.
How did you go about structuring the assessment?
We don't want to reinvent the wheel—that's not good use of our time, especially for a smaller organization. But when I researched, I found that nothing like what we wanted really existed. What we did find was structures of ideal organizations, which helped us define the five key areas. In each area, we defined four stages: what would be a super solid organization, versus something that is starting up? We see this as a tool to see progression of the organizations, rather than "you're a good one or a bad one." It’s not judgmental.
All of our affiliates are busy. If a question wasn’t essential, off it goes. Our focus was on, "What do I actually need to understand so that I can deliver support that will have an impact in these organizations? That will then have an impact on beneficiaries, on their communities, and on the country as a whole?"
Did you get feedback from any affiliates on the experience of going through the assessment?
There were a few who said, "Honestly, that was a bit of a wake-up call. I hadn't even thought about what I needed. Nobody asks you what you need."
“Honestly, that was a bit of a wake-up call. I hadn't even thought about what I needed. Nobody asks you what you need.”
—Affiliate feedback
Tell me about the results.
It gave us a lot of input. In addition to the individual answers for each organization, it provides an overall score from 1 to 4 in each area, and we can see the averages across all our affiliates: Program Management 2.5 out of 4, Board of Directors 2.3, Fundraising 2.0, Marketing & Communications 2.2, and Financial Management 2.5. I think the most surprising to me personally was that the lowest score was in fundraising. It showed that we definitely need to offer training in that area. There’s so much we can do to give them more confidence and more of the skills that they feel are useful for them.
Amigos of Costa Rica Affiliate Organizations responded to the Needs Assessment, answering questions such as the example shown below.
How are you using the assessment results now?
I’ve already started giving trainings that we developed based on the survey results [more on the training program in next month’s post!]. We wanted to make sure affiliates could see that they didn’t fill this out for no reason—there is an actual commitment to support them. If we promise something, we are going to deliver. We truly do care about our affiliates, and we want to make sure that they feel heard, that we are responding to their needs. That it's okay to not feel comfortable in every area, and that we are happy to help build little by little on their confidence, on their skills. Humility, and kindness, and caring about our people has to be at the forefront.
“We wanted to make sure affiliates could see that they didn’t fill this out for no reason—there is an actual commitment to support them. If we promise something, we are going to deliver.”
—Adriana Alfaro
The assessment also helps us ensure that we’re not training just so we can say we’ve trained people. We're going to track it. We're going to see improvement. We're going to complement it with coaching, with direct one-on-one feedback, with site visits.
Everything we do with affiliates is not a random checklist. It's truly strategic, in service of what we believe is the most important thing: to help these organizations have more impact, raise more funds, and be there for their communities and for the country.
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Stay tuned for our October story on the training plan for affiliates that Amigos is now implementing in response to the assessment results. The Amigos of Costa Rica blog is produced in collaboration with El Colectivo 506, a bilingual Costa Rican media organization reporting on community responses to social and environmental problems.
