Giving Compass' Take:

• On Beth Kanter's blog, Teresa Crawford (Executive Director, Social Sector Accelerator) shares some thoughts about nonprofit capacity-building programs based on extensive research.

• What can we learn from the lessons described in this post? Organizations should especially take a look at the tools they use in capacity building, since Crawford found many lacking in her own experience.

• Here's more about the process of nonprofit capacity building, do's and don'ts.

If you know me or have worked with me before you know I like to plan. It is so part of my personality that even on vacation my kids wake up in the morning and ask what’s the plan for the day. So, imagine how I must have felt two years ago when I became the Executive Director of the Social Sector Accelerator. All the planning was ahead of me to deliver on our mission to increase investment in the social sector, improve partnerships — particularly between local actors and their supporters — and provide support for strong, resilient and impactful nonprofits.

In addition to the countless lunches, coffees, roundtables, focus groups and other opportunities for feedback and discussion I engaged in I also dug into the evidence on the impacts of capacity building on organizations. I dug into the link between the wider theories of capacity development and building strong, resilient nonprofit organizations capable of achieving impact in their communities and on the issues they tackle every day. Answering these two questions is important to us at the Accelerator. We believe that any measurement of the impact of investment in strong organizations should ultimately come back to demonstrating the additional impact organizations are able to achieve after receiving this kind of support.

In all our research, we found three challenges to making sense of the evidence:

  1. Capacity building divorced from results. Why do we do what we do if not to make people’s lives better, their communities safer or increase access to quality education? If organizations are focused on those types of measurable results then why aren’t investments in organizations focused on helping groups achieve the durable results they define?
  2. The forgotten roots of capacity development in the movement for ownership and empowerment. Our role was to coach, support, mentor where necessary — but never to lead.
  3. Tools, tools, and more tools. Overall the tools were weak on measuring commitment and practice related to diversity, equity and inclusion.

I am happy to say that after two years we, at the Accelerator, have a much stronger plan. We are coaching foundations to adopt a capacity building mindset and provide more relevant support to their grantee partners.

Read the full article about capacity building programs by Teresa Crawford at BethKanter.org.