C05 Session: Building Capacity of Nonprofit Organizations

How do we know when organizations are ready to fully participate in capacity building?  Organizational change requires readiness on many fronts including executive director preparedness, board support, and an organizational culture that has a commitment to growth, willingness to seek help and a responsive approach to change.  This session will focus on issues of readiness as examined through a recent study on urban nonprofits.  Participants will share their experience in addressing motivation and barriers to change and explore how the research findings translate into planning and practice for nonprofit capacity building.

Capacity builders will agree that not all organizations are poised and ready to benefit from technical assistance, training, and other forms of interventions designed to improve organizational effectiveness.  Although nonprofits ask for help they may not be motivated to tackle fundamental organizational issues.  Incentives in the form of free services, or program funding in exchange for participation, or external pressures for accountability may prompt nonprofits to step forward and initiate relationships with management service organizations or funders who are interested in investing in the development of organizational capacity.

The issue of sustaining a beneficial arrangement of nonprofit services, however, does not rest solely with management service organizations/intermediaries or public and private funders.  Nonprofit leaders must also prepare to engage in organizational change battling many potential barriers, resistances and costs to the organization.  It is important that we pay attention to those factors that can serve as signals for readiness so that we can maximize our strategies and identify barriers that stand in the way of organizational change.

This session is based on recent research from a survey of 396 urban nonprofits that was gathered through multiple data collections strategies.  Organizations were contacted through electronic mail, web-based surveys, onsite recruitment at community events, and mail surveys.  The questionnaire measured a wide range of constructs, including organizational capacity, staff and volunteer knowledge, program development, level of collaboration, organizational structure, changes in size and structure that occurred in the past two years, and readiness to change.

The session will cover which factors predict the level of readiness to change in nonprofit organizations and what role readiness to change plays in predicting positive organizational behavior.

About the Presenters

Vanessa Mayers, Wayne State University

Ms. Mayers serves as the Program Associate of New Detroit’s Strengthening Community Organizations to Promote Effectiveness (SCOPE) initiative, which is a five-year demonstration project to establish an intensive capacity building model. In addition, she is a member of the evaluation team working with the investigators in data collection, program monitoring and outcome evaluation. As part of her role, she also teaches annual seminars on Logic Model, Program Evaluation and Theories of Change. Ms. Mayers, along with Ms. Sonia Plata were recently awarded a 3-year federal grant, Compassion Capital Fund, which expands New Detroit’s capacity building into two additional cities and a broader social service focus.

Sonia Plata, New Detroit, Inc.

Ms. Plata is the Director of Community Capacity Building for New Detroit and manager of SCOPE since 1999. Previously, Ms. Plata was director of the Detroit Leadership Development Program for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. An advocate of Latino rights, she serves as board chair of Latino Family Services, a member of the advisory board of the Center for Chicano/Boricua Studies at Wayne State University and a member of the Leadership Detroit Selection Committee for the Detroit Regional Chamber. As part of her role, she also teaches Application Workshops, Collaborative Partnerships and gives numerous presentations as required. Ms. Plata, along with Ms. Vanessa Mayers, were recently awarded a 3-year federal grant, Compassion Capital Fund, which expands New Detroit’s capacity building into two additional cities and a broader social service focus.

Joanne Sobeck, School of Social Work, Wayne State University

Joanne Sobeck, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Wayne State University. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in research methods and statistics and program and resource development. As a political scientist and social worker she has effectively combined the disciplines into a professional approach that reflects knowledge of social and political frameworks with an emphasis on practical strategies and tools for volunteers and workers in the nonprofit arena. Her research interests include community capacity building, substance abuse prevention, Native Americans, and policy processes. Sobeck currently serves as an evaluator and consultant on several relevant projects including a five-year demonstration project on capacity building with grassroots organizations, principal investigator for a research project on urban nonprofit capacity building, and consultant to the Youth Sports and Recreation Commission on their local capacity building initiative. She recently received a grant award from a large national foundation for case study development and knowledge management pertaining capacity building and fund development.