Tools to Support the Sector
The Ready for Change Tool
Building on the highly acclaimed Readiness Assessment Tool (RAT), Rocket Science have developed a new, easy-to-use tool for Third Sector organisations which are managing change. This free tool will help you better consider your stengths and weaknesses at a time when many, particularly smaller organisations, are having to adapt to a very challenging environment. We believe this tool will be useful to TSCF projects and also a wide range of others.
Download the tool for free here (please “save” rather than “open”)
This tool requires Excel 2003 or 2007 (other programs may have slight compatibility issues)
The Readiness Assessment Tool
The RAT (which stands for Readiness Assessment Tool) is designed to help third sector organiastions plan for the future – your readiness to move on. This is the second release of the tool: the questions have been streamlined, the guidance updated and the action plan improved from the version that you may be familiar with. The RAT is similar to the Ready for Change Tool but is more in depth (which has postive effects but also makes it less practical for use by a group of senior managers as part of an 360 degree review).
It will take you step-by-step through many of the issues, barriers and opportunities that your organisation, project or partnership needs to think about so that you can plan more effectively. The actions you then create may need to be implemented either right away or in the longer term and RAT will help you to decide what to do first, as well as where to go for further help. RAT is not a quality standard or accreditation process- you are not being assessed! Instead it prompts you to think about what changes you need to make to plan for the future and encourages you to get all your information in one place. This will create a baseline – a starting point – which can then be revisited at regular intervals in the future to assess your progress, as well as creating a great starting point for writing a business plan, funding application or making a case to your supporters and/or investors.
