Co-Production Self-Assessment

Is My Organization Ready for a Time Bank?

The Co-Production Self Assessment is a simple tool that will help you determine to what extent your program is meeting the principles of Co-Production.

It also shows the most effective way your program can focus its energies to effect change.

The questions below are a sample of the kind of questions that a Co-Production Assessment asks about whether and how much your organization subscribes to or implements the five core values of Co-Production. The questions can be applied at any one of six different levels:

  1. Mission
  2. Board, management and organizational structure
  3. Current strategic plan
  4. Budget
  5. Current policies and procedures
  6. Ongoing, day-to-day operations

Asset Based Questions

  1. Does your organization take into account the things that your client can do for others in the community as part of the strengths the client brings?
  2. Does your organization take into account client abilities to mobilize others as part of an asset based approach to human services?

Redefining Work

  1. Are residents and clients asked to fulfill substantive roles (beyond administrative support) in achieving the outcomes of your organization?
  2. How do you record the unpaid hours that clients and community members contribute to your organization’s mission?
  3. Do you reward the people who contribute in any way?

Reciprocity

  1. Does your organization request, require or even encourage paybacks? (Do you just deliver services and material goods?)
  2. Do you accept help given to people outside of the organization as a form of paying back?
  3. Do you budget money or create special programs with incentives and rewards for people who contribute?

Social Networks

  1. Does your organization actively seek to include building trust relationships, mutual self-help and social action networks among clients?
  2. Do you define clients as individuals or as multi-party clusters that include family, extended family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and informal support systems?
  3. Does your organization work in collaboration with other agencies? Do you encourage clients to access support and help from clients who are part of another organization?