How does it work?

The Investment Readiness Enterprise Assessment Diagnostic (IREAD) is an online tool that enables you to assess your community organisation and find out if it is investment ready. You may be planning to seek investment from a funding body or a social investor to grow your business or enterprise or for the acquisition and development of a capital asset. They will want to know that you are likely to achieve your objectives and there is no risk to their investment. 

IREAD asks you a series of questions about your business, including your systems, your people and your financial systems and procedures. The DTNI tool is specific in that it includes a series of questions around assets, their acquisition and development.

When you have completed all the questions, the IREAD tool will produce a report with key recommendations on getting your organisation ready for investment. 

Completing the IREAD tool.

The Investment Readiness Enterprise Assessment Diagnostic (IREAD) can be completed all in one go or over time. Completing it in one sitting is likely to take anything between 25-40 minutes depending on whether you have information readily to hand. 

Sections can be completed in any order. Questions can also be skipped or later amended. Remember to save your work. 

Information you'll need to complete the Checker:

  • Your annual accounts (or estimated figures)

  • An overview of the skills and experience of your staff & board

  • Information about your products/services

  • An idea of your vision and future plans

  • Basic knowledge of your financial systems and procedures

  • An idea of the organisation’s status in relation to assets and their worth (if owned)  

Three key tips for completing the Checker: 

  1. Be honest with yourself. There are no right and wrong answers, and no prizes for getting "good marks". You will get most benefit from this tool if you complete it fully and honestly 

  2. Consider completing this tool as a group. Working through these questions will take a little longer if you discuss it with colleagues, but you will learn more about your organisation and what others think 

  3. Don't worry too long about precisely where to position each slider. A little nudge will not affect things greatly - thinking about what the question means and how you can improve is much more important 

  4. Don't forget to click "Save" to see your report!

Start the Tool

Section 1

The two parts of Section 1 require you to enter some text, some figures and make some selections from multiple choice answers. 

Before attempting to complete Section 1b - Financial, you should make sure you have your latest audited accounts to hand.  If you are a new organisation and don’t have accounts, ignore Q11-21 in this section. 

Sections 2 to 5

Sections 2 to 5 are different.  Each question has a slider that you can change.  You need to position this slider where you think it best fits your organisation according to the descriptions given. 

You can position each slider adjacent to or in between different descriptors - just slide it to where it most closely fits.  For example you might think "we are a bit better than X, but still closer to X than Y".

If you are unsure about the answer to a question, or if you don't think it applies to you (perhaps because you are a new organisation), just leave the answer and move to the next.

Understanding what questions mean and why they are being asked

At various points in the tool there are text boxes highlighted in blue: these contain text that explain why the next set of questions are being asked - why a funder/ social investor would ask them. At other points in the tool you will see some text highlighted in bold.  If you don't understand exactly what this term means, you will find an explanation in the Glossary of Terms.

Privacy & security

DTNI will store your information securely and will not sell it or otherwise share it with any third party. We may use some of the data you have given us for research purposes to help inform DTNI’S community enterprise work, but only as anonymised statistical information.