 Welcome to STEP, the Strengthening and Tiered Evaluation Process, a CSO-focused approach to compliance and risk management. STEP replaces typical, past-fail evaluations with a comprehensive, evidence-based approach that focuses on the needs of civil society organisations. Our goal is to highlight your organisation's strengths as well as areas for improvement to help you better manage risk, obtain funding and accomplish your mission. The online questionnaire is designed to evaluate your organisation across nine streams – governance, financial controls, legal compliance, operational planning and continuity, risk management, best practices in community engagement, data security and privacy, safeguarding and management of implementing partners. Once your evaluation is complete, your organisation is assigned to a tier, basic, foundation standard, agency standard and plus. Tears are designed to align with funder's risk tolerance and show where CSOs can make improvements. There are no wrong answers and any information you submit will be treated as confidential. If any question puts you at risk of disclosing sensitive information, please let us know. You will receive an email with a link to an online questionnaire. The questionnaire is split into two parts. For the first part, you will be asked to provide basic details about your organisation. For example, the legal name and country of legal formation, address of your main office and if your organisation conducts activities in other countries. You will then be asked a series of questions for each of the nine streams described earlier. You will be asked to upload any written policies and processes that your organisation uses. A full list of possible documents will be provided at the outset of the assessment to help guide you. Upon completion of the first set of questions, your responses will be reviewed by a member of the STEP team. An additional information may be requested to support our review. If your responses indicate your organisation has more in-depth risk management and compliance systems in place, you will be invited to complete a second set of questions which dig deeper into the policies and procedures of your organisation. Upon completion of all relevant questions, your responses will be evaluated and a report provided to you. You may start and stop at any time and if you find anything confusing, please let us know. For additional questions, see our FAQ page. Never hesitate to reach out if you have questions, need support or just need a little guidance. Now, let's begin.