(817) 616-9464
The Individual Growth Assessment (IGA) gives you an honest, scored picture of where you stand across eight dimensions of personal performance and a prioritized plan for what to build on next.
What the IGA Measures
The Individual Growth Assessment (IGA) is a proprietary, research-grounded self-assessment built specifically for nonprofit leaders and fundraising professionals.
It is not a personality test. It does not sort you into a type or assign you a label. It measures the behaviors, habits, and conditions that are actually driving or limiting your performance right now. And because those things change over time, so do your scores.
The IGA was developed by Dr. Gary Cole, drawing on 35 years of frontline fundraising leadership, organizational development work, and research grounding in the Maslach Burnout Inventory, Adam Grant’s work on prosocial motivation and hidden potential, Brené Brown’s research on vulnerability and behavioral integrity, the Job Demands-Resources model, and Self-Determination Theory.
It is a diagnostic instrument built for the specific pressures of nonprofit leadership: chronic overextension, mission fatigue, board dependency, relational labor, and the unique organizational dynamics of small nonprofits where one person’s capacity is the ceiling of the entire program.
WHAT THE IGA IS NOT
The IGA does not measure your personality, your aptitude, or your worth as a leader. It does not tell you who you are. It tells you where you are right now, across eight specific performance dimensions, and what to work on first to move from where you are to where you are capable of being.
Eight Dimensions. One Complete Picture.
The IGA assesses your performance across eight research-based dimensions. Together, they form a complete picture of how you are currently showing up as a leader and where the most significant growth opportunities lie.
Your scores are rated on a 1–5 scale. 1 = Almost Never true for you. 5 = Almost Always true for you.
Dimension scores are averaged and mapped to a growth profile.
How Your Scores Work
Each of the 58 questions is answered on a five-point scale, ranging from 1 (Almost Never) to 5 (Almost Always). Your score for each dimension is the average of the questions within it. Every dimension score maps to one of five performance ranges.
Your Results Identify One of Five Growth Profiles
Once your dimension scores are calculated, the IGA maps your results to one of five growth profiles. Each profile has a different coaching approach, different priorities, and a different starting point for the work.
Knowing your profile does not define you. It tells you where to focus first.
How the IGA Works
The Individual Growth Assessment is designed to be taken independently, without preparation and without a facilitator present. The process is straightforward.
Who the IGA is Built For
The IGA was designed for one specific audience: nonprofit leaders and fundraising professionals who are working hard and want to understand whether what they are putting in is producing what it should.
It is most useful if any of these are true for you:
• You are an Executive Director managing development responsibilities alongside everything else your role requires
• You are a Development Director or VP of Development who wants an objective picture of your personal performance strengths and gaps​
• You are a Chief Development Officer who wants to invest in the growth and support of the fundraising team​​
• Your organization’s fundraising results are not where you believe they should be, and you are not entirely sure whether the gap is a program problem, a personal capacity problem, or both
• You are preparing for a major initiative: a capital campaign, a leadership
transition, or a significant organizational growth phase, and you want to know
whether you are personally ready to lead it
• You have been in your role long enough to feel the weight of chronic
overextension, and want to understand what is actually driving it
• You are a board chair or governance leader who wants to support your
Executive Director’s development with something more substantive than a
performance review
Built on Research. Built for Your Role.
The IGA is not a general leadership assessment adapted for nonprofits. It was built from the ground up for the specific demands, pressures, and performance variables that are unique to nonprofit leaders and fundraising professionals.
Its eight dimensions draw on five evidence-based research traditions:
• Burnout Prevention Research: Burnout science and occupational health
research, including the Maslach Burnout Inventory framework and the Job
Demands-Resources model, which identify the specific conditions under which
high-motivation professionals experience chronic depletion and performance
decline.
• Prosocial Motivation and Growth: Adam Grant’s research on prosocial
motivation, the psychology of giving and taking in professional environments,
hidden potential and growth mindset, and the conditions under which people
with genuine motivation underperform relative to their capability.
• Behavioral Integrity and Self-Awareness: Brené Brown’s research on
vulnerability, behavioral integrity, shame versus guilt dynamics, and the specific ways nonprofit leaders armor up against the relational and emotional demands of their roles in ways that ultimately limit their performance.
• Intrinsic Motivation Research: Self-Determination Theory, which identifies the role of autonomy, competence, and relatedness in sustaining intrinsic motivation and high-quality performance over time, particularly in mission-driven professional contexts.
• Nonprofit Sector Research: Sector-specific data from the Chronicle of
Philanthropy, the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s State of Nonprofits 2024,
Nonprofit HR, and SHRM, providing the empirical context for the specific
performance challenges the IGA is designed to measure.
Address
5900 Balcones Drive #20830
Austin, TX 78731
Phone
817-616-9464
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​For Specialist Network Inquiries, Contact:
Reese Macneal reese@elmplacecollaborative.com
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