Building nonprofit capacity: the best reports to read.
As part of Nonprofit Builder project we have put together a collection of really remarkable reports on capacity building, how to do it, its impact, and how foundations can get started with it. Sharing below:
Major reports and manuals:
Supporting Grantee Capacity: Strengthening Effectiveness Together, Anna Pond and Jen Bokoff, 2015.
Examines how foundations engage with building capacity of their grantees, with the aim of helping newcomers to get started. A must-read for foundation grant-makers.
Integrating Capacity and Strategy A Handbook for Next-Generation Grantmakers and Grantees, by C.R. Hibbs, 2014.
Aimed at foundations, this guide offers tools to assess and visualise nonprofit capacity, with an interesting strategic approach: not all nonprofits need to be strong everywhere, it depends on the kind of work they do.
Evaluating Foundation-Supported Capacity Building: Lessons Learned, by Thomas E. Backer, Jane Ellen Bleeg and Kathryn Groves, 2010.
The executive summary is a must-read for its gems: five key conditions for effective capacity building, ten good practices for effective capacity building, eight barriers to effective capacity building… Clear concise experience based lessons, invaluable.
The Barefoot Guide to Working with Organisations and Social Change, by the Barefoot Collective, 2012
The wonderful & much-lived classic of how to to capacity building.
Building the capacity of capacity builders: a study of management support and field-building organisations in the nonprofit sector, Paul Connolly and Peter York, 2003. Executive summary here.
Did you know that the most critical dimension of capacity for a nonprofit organisation is adaptive capacity — yet it is also the most overlooked? Dates 2003 but offers relevant strategic insight on how to build capacity building as a field.
A Network Approach to Capacity Building, Jennifer Chandler and Kristen Scott Kennedy, 2015
Reviews a few examples of how peer-to-peer learning can be facilitated.
Articles:
- Eight Lessons for Foundations Interested in Building the Capacity of Nonprofits, by Jennifer Henderson-Frakes
- Today’s Challenges: Training and Capacity Building, by Sara El-Amine for the Mobilisation Lab, 2017
- The Return of Capacity Building, by Jared Raynor
- Building Capacity Through Networks, by Jennifer Chandler & Kristen Scott Kennedy, 2016
- Grantmakers’ Capacity Building FAQs, Lori Bartczak,
Have we missed something? email me at daniel@nonprofitbuilder.org or use the comment section below.
