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C04 Town Meeting Outcomes

Nonprofit Capacity Building: Our Shared Commitment

Outcome of Alliance for Nonprofit Management Town Meeting at DC'04 Annual Conference

"As capacity builders with nonprofit organizations, we share a commitment to public service and a strong desire to make the world a better place. Our work strengthens nonprofits so that they, in turn, advance society toward inclusion and equity. We act collaboratively to bring about social justice—promoting meaningful participation by people in the matters that affect their lives, and improving quality of life for all.

"Our capacity building starts with ourselves. We continuously deepen our awareness and skills in ways that improve the quality and effectiveness of our efforts. We engage in critical thinking, inner work, service and advocacy to—as Gandhi encouraged—‘be the change we want to see in the world.’ We actively share our experience, knowledge, promising practices and new ideas, to build a strong learning community that reaches across the nonprofit sector.

"In our work with organizations, we aim to make sure nonprofits are highly effective—internally sound and achieving results that benefit communities. We generate resources--influencing funding practices, nonprofit leadership and the public will--to promote a nonprofit sector that is empowered, humane, and sustainable in contributing to the common good."

The above statement was drafted as a result of individual, small group and large group discussions at the DC'04 Town Meeting. Alliance members discussed and reported back on their broad goals that bring them to nonprofit work. The draft statement was circulated to all Alliance members in December, 2004 and amended to include their feedback.

An Action Notebook for Nonprofit Capacity Builders

The Alliance DC’04 Annual Conference—especially the Town Meeting —set a course for taking action to build the power of nonprofits. Over the 2004 fall season, members followed up this renewed commitment by investing social capital (and dollars, too) in four key areas.

Collective interest. Alliance members provided organizational development support for a national collaboration, worked to start up a regional management support organization dedicated to nonprofit excellence, and implemented a capacity-building initiative for immigrant and refugee organizations. Members also got involved in field-building: convened white practitioners about effective racial justice as part and parcel of organization development, participated in a team exploring the definition and practice of capacity building in the nonprofit sector, and worked on developing professional standards intended to honor and increase nonprofit power.

Grantmaking gusto. Members acted to strengthen philanthropy by sharing research nationally (via publications and conferences) to establish the need for better recognizing nonprofit overhead costs and funding these costs; and by forming a funders’ collaborative, holding a grantmaker retreat on racial equity in funding, increasing individual donations to a women’s foundation, and launching a giving circle.

Learning power. Using executive coaching, peer dialogue facilitation, trainings, and their own professional development, Alliance-member capacity builders worked more intentionally to empower nonprofits with greater skills for leadership, governance, and communications. They also ramped up the sharing of tools and resources, and peer exchange through online discussions.

Rights, rules, and reason. Alliance members met with government officials to support a reasoned approach to recent state legislation on nonprofit integrity, and worked directly with nonprofits to raise awareness about compliance, especially on financial accountability and employment law. These are increasingly important matters in view of a spate of IRS audits and investigations of nonprofits. On voting rights, capacity builders worked with national nonprofits engaged in protecting free and fair elections in the USA, posted a voter guide to candidates on a website, and acted in a neutral observer role for vote recounts.

Alliance members who support advocacy organizations experience this work as doubly powerful. Yet the rewards of paying close attention to accountability and capacity are not limited to groups with advocacy strategies.

As one member noted, “The conference helped me to realize that whether or not my organization struggles with these issues, the organizations we serve do, and I have become better at communicating ethical values and infrastructure issues to those organizations.”

All in all, capacity builders who are part of the Alliance network are clear that the work of building power in nonprofits is what they do all the time—most often in identifying organizational challenges and mapping out change, facilitating planning processes, conducting or guiding evaluations, and enriching the field of capacity building itself.