Best Practices - Capacity Building

Growing Local Philanthropy: The Role and Reach of Community Foundations
Community Strategies Group and the Aspen Institute
This community field survey represents a first step in documenting the current status and trends related to geographic component funds (funds that are dedicated to serving specific geographic areas or communities, and that typically include local decision making and/or operating structures) and, more broadly, assessing how these funds affect the culture of philanthropy in our communities.

Building Capacity While Assessing It
Blueprint Research and Design
This article describes how three grantmakers, Social Venture Partners (SVP) Seattle, the Marguerite Casey Foundation, and the Community Clinics Initiative (a joint project of Tides and The California Endowment), adapted the McKinsey Grid for organizational capacity assessment, and the success and failures with it.

Building to Last: A Grantmaker's Guide to Strengthening Nonprofit Organizations
The Conservation Company
This guide highlights components of effective giving, which include: laying a strong foundation, developing tools to build organizational effectiveness and how to set up a solid framework.

Capacity Building for Smaller Foundations: Shoes for the Cobbler's Children
Human Interaction Resource Institute
This article informs small foundations on how to increase access to capacity building resources in order to maximize their philanthropic resources and improve organizational operations and impact.

Effective Capacity Building in Nonprofit Organizations
Venture Philanthropy Partners
Case studies provide insight into the subjects' various capacity-building efforts. The report delivers lessons in successful capacity building from the nonprofits interviewed and shares a framework for defining nonprofit capacity as well as tools to help measure a nonprofit's capacity level.