The Network Health Scorecard is a survey for your members, which explores key dimensions of network purpose, function and form. It gives the whole network feedback on members' experience and perception of the network.  This tool is a virtual device and therefore can be particularly valuable for networks that are geographically distributed and/or where face-to-face contact may be limited. It can provide a high-level “snapshot” or baseline for how the network is operating. It can be repeated at regular intervals to support comparative discussions.

An invite should be sent to each member of your network, and this is normally done by the Network Leader. In the message body field, we suggest you write a message to your members to explain:

• The developmental purpose of the survey
• How and when the results will be shared
• What will be done with the results

It is useful to specify an “end date” for the survey to encourage rapid completion.

How about something like:

Our network is participating in a short diagnostic to assess our support and development needs as a network. We would really appreciate your help by completing this short survey - it will take approximately 5 minutes and- is designed to help gather a baseline of how our network is performing. Please feel free to be as open as possible in your responses and to use the "comments" section at the end of the survey for any additional views.

The results of this survey will be discussed at a follow-up workshop with network members.