While there are objective measures of empowerment such as the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), which attempts to capture women's ability to engage in political decision making, achieve professional advancement, and earn salary base. level comparable to that of men (Charmes & Wieringa, 2003). The GEM also examines other quantifiable factors, such as the number of seats in government, the number of managerial positions held by women, and annual income (Charmes & Wieringa, 2003). This type of measures could easily be adapted to NGOs. For example, NGOs interested in determining whether they are operating within an empowerment framework should look at organizational composition to assess how they are using local constituents to meet the organization's mission. NGOs that claim to “empower” their communities but have few local constituents or service users on the board or staff should further review their organizational chart to examine whether empowerment is being operationalized on a day-to-day basis.