Nonprofits need certain capacities in order to deliver results. These include things like strong leaders, financial management, technology and office space, as well as softer things like communications, adaptability and relationships.
Nonprofit leaders have complex jobs. In order to excel in their roles and drive results, these leaders need ongoing support from funders and key partners. While there are no perfect leadership development approaches, GEO has found three key characteristics make them most effective: focusing on developing collective leadership of teams within and across organizations, ensuring that leadership development support is contextual, and providing continuous support for growth.
Grantmaker refines evaluation model to enhance grantee and organizational accountability, while positioning it to inform and support decision-making.
How Should We Approach Capacity-Building Work?
In the nonprofit sector there are various forms of collaboration, ranging in formality, actors and purposes. Some of the most common types of collaboration include networks, coalitions, movements, strategic alliances, strategic co-funding, public private partnerships and collective impact initiatives.
Grantmakers can take a number of steps to ensure that the support we provide to grantees, and the policies and procedures connected to that support, enables nonprofits to effectively fulfill their missions. The goal, as described by Clara Miller, formerly of Nonprofit Finance Fund, should be to “create an enterprise that can reliably attract revenue and deliver quality program over the long term.”
Today, many grantmakers recognize the role of social movements in advancing opportunity, well-being and justice for all people. And more grantmakers are making a shift from solely supporting individual organizations and programs to supporting the multiple organizations and intersecting networks that make up movements.
This special supplement was created to capture the latest thinking about how nonprofit organizations, grantmakers, public funders and social entrepreneurs can increase the impact of successful solutions to urgent social challenges.
There is not one “right way” to provide capacity-building support because each leader and organization is unique and circumstances are always changing. Grantmakers should keep “The Three Cs” in mind when providing capacity-building support: make it contextual, continuous and collective.
This guide presents the benefits and challenges of partnerships between local and national funders, and highlights key considerations for both kinds of funders to foster success in their collaboration.
GEO has prepared a publication that provides a framework for understanding the array of roles that funders can play in supporting movements and networks.
Investing for Impact: Building the Capacity and Infrastructure of High-Performing Nonprofits