La Raza Community Resource Center
Project: Organizational Assessment
La Raza Community Resource Center is a bilingual, multi-service, nonprofit organization dedicated to meeting the social service, immigration, educational, and leadership development needs of low-income families and individuals in San Francisco’s Mission District and the greater Bay Area.
Why La Raza CRC partnered with Lyons-Newman Consulting:
Following the retirement of La Raza CRC’s long-time executive director and a period of increased urgency and stress for the organization due to the pandemic, La Raza CRC wanted to take a step back and understand its structural, staffing, leadership development, and other capacity building needs to support teamwork and mission effectiveness in the organization’s future.
The process:
Lyons-Newman Consulting took a collaborative approach to the organizational assessment process that included La Raza CRC’s staff, board of directors, and external informants. We conducted a bilingual organizational assessment survey of board and staff and interviewed funders, board members, and experts in the field to assess the organization’s current state. We then produced a report that identified strengths and opportunities for improvement across 13 areas of organizational effectiveness. Through meetings with staff, we worked together to develop and refine these opportunities for improvement and determine recommendations and priority actions to support La Raza CRC’s effectiveness and deepen its impact.
The results:
The assessment report and recommendations provided by Lyons Newman Consulting to La Raza CRC’s staff and board of directors guided and prepared the organization to update its organizational structure, build internal infrastructure, and work even more effectively as a team in service of the organization’s mission.
What La Raza Community Resource Center says:
“By partnering with us to get feedback from our staff, board, funders, and community, Belinda and Karla supported us to demonstrate that we are all in this together. They strengthened our capacity so that we could all grow out of this pandemic together and build the new agency our community needs.” — Gabriel Medina, Executive Director