Created by AVSF, the Capacity Building Index offers a method for evaluating the strengthening of organisations, whether they be farmers’ organisations (of varying degrees of organisation) or cooperation partners, based on a shared analysis of 6 essential components of organisational strengthening, empirically identified through the work of AVSF, its associates and partners: Technical capacity, Administrative and financial capacity, Political impact capacity, Representativeness / legitimacy, Democratic functioning of the organisation and governance, Economic model, diversification of funding and self-financing capacity.
Without seeking to debate whether these 6 variables are sufficient to describe the situation of an organisation, AVSF proposes this guide as a tool which will give a relatively good indication of the state of strengthening of an organisation. Simple to apply, it is nevertheless relatively reliable and quantifiable, without claiming to fully describe an organisation’s situation.
The CBI can be used with any type of organisation, farmers’ organisation and / or implementing partner, which needs to strengthen itself within the framework of an action or partnership with a structure such as AVSF. The CBI is first and foremost a tool for the members of the organisations, so that they can evaluate the development of their structure. It is therefore a participatory tool, which presupposes a high degree of participation by partners / farmers’ organisations and their members in a process of self-evaluation.
