C06 Session: Financial Investments in CB

Financial Investments in Capacity Building - 360-Degree Community Dialogues

Thursday, August 3, 11:00am - 12:30pm

Track:  Financial Management and Fundraising

Presenters

Thomas E. Backer, Human Interaction Research Institute; Florence Green, California Association of Nonprofits

Description

Using results from an exploratory national research study of foundation investments in capacity building, this session presents a "360-degree dialogue" process communities can use to talk candidly about making best use of scarce resources for funding capacity building.  Such a process can encourage funders to make more resources available, by offering opportunities for collaborative grantmaking, leveraging, strategic planning, evaluation, and honest dialogue about return on investment - using whatever metrics are available.

About the Presenters

Thomas Backer, Human Interaction Research Institute

Nationally-known researcher on nonprofit capacity building, community collaborations and related issues of change; co-author (with Jane Bleeg) of 2004 book, "The Expanding Universe: New Directions in Nonprofit Capacity Building"; project director for Philanthropic Capacity Building Resources database project and Carnegie-funded study of foundation financial investments in capacity building.

Florence Green, California Association of Nonprofits

Florence L. Green is the Executive Director of the California Association of Nonprofits (CAN), the largest statewide nonprofit association in the United States.  For 30 years she has been a nationally recognized consultant and trainer working with foundations, nonprofit organizations,  governments, academic institutions, coalitions and management support organizations throughout the United States, Australia and Canada.

She has published several articles on fundraising, board development, strategic planning, collaboration, nonprofit ethics and accountability and nonprofit management and will soon publish a book on fundraising for public libraries.  She is the past board president of CAN and the Nonprofit Management Association (now known as the Alliance for Nonprofit Management). She helped develop a self-administered development audit published by the Foundation Center and is a founder and immediate past Vice President of the National Council of Nonprofit Associations. She is a founder of and serves on the CAN Policy Council, an independent statewide advocacy and public policy coalition committed to strengthening the public policy access and power for nonprofits in California and is on the Editorial Board of the Nonprofit Quarterly.

She has taught nonprofit management, strategic planning and fundraising at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles and the University of Texas at Austin. She was once the director of training for the Grantsmanship Center, at the time the largest nonprofit training organization in the United States.  She taught political science and theater at a community college for 12 years and has started seven nonprofit organizations–all of which still exist.  She was the first woman elected to the city council in her community, she started a multipurpose county-wide senior citizen program, started the Kern County Area Agency on Aging, served on a Presidential Advisory Committee to review proposed K-12 curriculum, and worked for a time as a city planner.  She is also proud to say she once led a successful effort to recall her local school board. In 2000 and 2001 she was selected by Nonprofit Times as one of the top 50 most influential and powerful nonprofit leaders in the U. S.