Building Capacity in Nonprofit Organizations

April 2001, 96 pages. The Urban Institute, 2100 M Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20037 (202) 833-0687

The much-used (and some might say overused) term, capacity building, is both simplistic and complex. It has come to mean many things to many people and many organizations on a multitude of levels. This report, the result of a collaboration involving the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Urban Institute's Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy, and the Human Interaction Resource Institute (HIRI), is an attempt to bring order to some of this chaos by developing "a conceptual model for thinking about effective ways to build the capacity of nonprofits" and creating "a new vision of nonprofit development . . . based on nurturing and growing the sector's capacity as a whole."

The Foundation commissioned two papers on the topic that were presented at a seminar in June, 2000 to a group of nonprofit practitioners, technical assistance providers, researchers, and foundation representatives for feedback. The Urban Institute researchers were charged with developing a conceptual model for capacity building based on a review of literature regarding civil society, sustainable development, and organizational management. HIRI was asked to prepare an environ- mental scan of the types of programs foundations have established to build nonprofit capacity. The resulting 96-page publication includes both papers as well as a brief chapter on "next steps." All three sections include extensive bibliographies.

The Urban Institute paper, as expected, is more theoretically oriented and focuses on research. The environmental scan provides an interesting overview of what foundations are doing in this field as well as context for four sets of findings: eight core components of effective capacity building, five current challenges to that effectiveness, forty "good practice" capacity-building activities of foundations in the United States, and recommendations for field-building in this arena.

Deena Epstein, The George Gund Foundation