Photo: Merrill Black, Support Center for Nonprofit Management
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
- Chinese Proverb
What is Capacity Building?
Many people find themselves working in nonprofit organizations because they are committed to the agency's mission, whether it be saving the environment, improving education, increasing civil rights, or creating access to housing. While the positive energy associated
with the commitment people bring to working in a nonprofit can go a long way, nonprofit staff often need assistance in facing numerous management challenges:
The program director who is a wonderful advocate for her clients discovers she's responsible for raising money to keep her program running
The social worker who finds himself supervising staff when he has no experience or training in supervision
The executive director who finds herself with a board of directors who are happy to lend their name to the organization yet aren't aware of their legal and fiduciary oversight roles and responsibilities
What these common scenarios represent are nonprofits that need to build their management capacity so they can fulfill their missions. This need for management infrastructure can be resolved in two ways. The nonprofit can, for example, call on someone to:
fix the immediate problem (write a grant proposal for them), or
help them build their own capacity so they can eventually resolve the problem themselves (teach them how to write a grant proposal).
This second form of support is called capacity building or technical assistance (TA).
Capacity building in the nonprofit sector is frequently needed in the areas of organizational development, strategic and long-range planning, developing fundraising plans, developing financial management systems, board development, human resources development,
developing volunteer programs, technology, marketing, and measuring outcomes.
