Public Agency

Investing in Capacity Building: A Guide to High-Impact Approaches Improving management practices—the most challenging aspect of capacity building—is essential to increasing the impact of a nonprofit's limited resources. Author Barbara Blumenthal helps grantmakers and consultants design better methods of helping nonprofits, while showing nonprofit managers how to get more effective support.

Author Paul Firstenberg challenges grantmakers to proactively assist their grantee's management in maximizing the nonprofit's social impact, showing grantseekers how potential funders increasingly emphasize organizational capacity building.

Authors Barbara Kibbe and Fred Setterberg explain how the appropriate use of consultants can generate exciting methods of forwarding your organization's goals.

John Nason, drawing on years of experience as a trustee, guides foundation officials and their boards through difficulties and provides insights into critical areas of concern.

The Foundation Center, March 1989, 173 pp.

Available online from The Foundation Center.

2007, 29 pages. Grantcraft, 320 East 43rd Street, New York, NY, 10017, 212-573-4879, www.grantcraft.org

http://www.grantcraft.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=page.viewpage&pageid=840

I have always revered the work of David McCullough and recently I read remarks he made last spring that focused his audience on arts education:

2008, 11 pages. Foundation Center, 79 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10003, 800-424-9836, www.foundationcenter.org

http://foundationcenter.org/gainknowledge/
research/pdf/intlgmiv_highlights.pdf

As a program officer at The San Francisco Foundation, I say “No” to artists and arts organizations daily. I try to soften the blow, detailing the reality of limited resources and an overabundance of projects, seldom discussing quality or appropriateness, thinking I am kinder in vagueness.

2009, 16 pages. The New Media Consortium, 6101 W. Courtyard, Bldg. One, Suite 100, Austin, TX, 78730, 512-445-4200, www.nmc.org

http://www.nmc.org/pdf/Into-the-Breach.pdf