Organisationl review of FOKUS – Forum for kvinner og utviklingsspørsmål

FOKUS is a Norwegian umbrella organisation formally established in 1995 with 60 members, and that currently has 48 members (2021). FOKUS has a board and secretariat in Norway, and a land office in Colombia. FOKUS currently has an agreement with Norad that ends in 2022. FOKUS has signalled that they will apply for a new four (4) year agreement starting from January 2023.

The purpose of this assignment was to conduct a full organisational review of FOKUS. The review focused on the current program period, 2019 – 2022.

The review was two-parted and the assessment criteria/questions were:

1) Assessment of follow-up on the recommendations from the 2017 review:

• Assess progress to date related to each of the recommendations made in the 2017 report.
• Identify major outstanding issues if any.

2) Review and make recommendations regarding other organization aspects:

• Review FOKUS’s guidelines, methodologies, and processes for partner review of their own member organizations and partners. FOKUS has recently completed organisational reviews of their own member /partner organisations and it is expected that these can be used as the basis for a desk review of minimum 2 partner review reports.

• Review of the functioning and valued added of FOKUS as an umbrella organisation.

• Review current partnership and financing strategy and models and provide recommendations for potential improvements and innovations to enable the organisation to grow and meet its goals.

• Review policies and procedures for financial, monitoring and follow-up of member organisations.

• FOKUS’ ability to reach and support organisations beyond its pool of member organisations with the view to further develop this function.