Organizational Health and Growth: Self-Paced Learning for Watershed Groups

Free self-paced modules and checklists on mission, leadership, position descriptions, budgeting, and work planning, built for small volunteer-run watershed organizations.

The Hudson River Watershed Alliance does for New York's watershed groups roughly what POWR does for Pennsylvania's, and the organizations it serves face the same problems as groups here: an aging board, no written position descriptions, a mission statement nobody can recite, and a budget that exists mostly in the treasurer's head. Working with River Network, the Alliance produced a set of Organizational Health and Growth checklists and a series of self-paced learning modules addressing exactly those gaps. Topics include writing or revising a mission statement, developing leadership and decision-making models that fit how the organization actually operates, defining and writing position descriptions for recruitment, and budgeting and work planning. The modules are free, short, and can be taken one at a time as needs come up rather than as a course. POWR recommends them to Pennsylvania watershed organizations, and they complement POWR's own capacity building tool library already in this collection.