C06 Thursday, 9am-10:30am

Assessments: A Powerful Change Strategy, a Delicate Role Balance

Carol Lukas, Fieldstone Alliance
Sandy Jacobsen, Fieldstone Alliance

Capacity building assessments are a powerful change strategy for nonprofits and collaboratives, but they require careful design and a delicate balance in the relationship between the funder, capacity builder, and nonprofit.  There are pitfalls to avoid around purpose, power, privacy and price.  Learn the five most common assessment goals, scan the typical strategies and design choices grantmakers and consultants use to accomplish them, and understand the need for careful attention to roles and relationships.

Track: Capacity Building Models and Strategies

boardnetUSA: Empowering Diverse Leadership into Nonprofit Boardrooms

Brooke W. Mahoney, Volunteer Consulting Group/boardnetUSA
Todd G. Day, Volunteer Consulting Group/boardnetUSA
J.D. Hokoyama, Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Inc.
Kim St. Bernard, Girl Scouts of the USA

A strong nonprofit sector challenges governing boards to reach out for a diversity of leadership and experience in their board members.  Learn how boardnetUSA is collaborating with local MSOs, universities and state associations to transform the way these organizations connect nonprofits to potential board members – across boundaries of age, ethnicity, geography and skill.  This session is a must for individuals working to help local nonprofits access the diversity of knowledge their boardrooms need to effectively lead organizations operating in complex environments.

Track: Leadership and Governance

Building Capacity through the Use of Outsourcing and Fiscal Sponsorship

Gerald R. Solomon, PHFE Management Solutions
Jane Levikow, Tides Center
Paul Vandeventer, Community Partners
Jonathan Spack, Third Sector New England

The CEOs of three successful fiscal sponsors will facilitate a discussion centered around the changing landscape of capacity building in the sector and the evolving options relating to outsourcing and use of fiscal sponsors.  This highly interactive and engaging conversation will cover what the mutual expectations are and should be from both the sponsor's and client’s perspective.

Track: Financial Management and Fundraising

Building Collaborative Leadership with Coaching through the Lens of Culture

Patricia St.Onge, Seven Generations Consulting
Diana Lee, National Community Development Institute

More and more consultants and MSOs are developing coaching programs to help nonprofit executives succeed.  This session will provide participants with a practical understanding of culturally based coaching, and its potential to help clients fully embrace effective and collaborative leadership styles.  The session will include a review of case studies, and participants will have an opportunity to practice coaching through role plays.

Track: Cultural Competency

Building Fundraising Capacity within Communities of Color

Steve Lew, CompassPoint Nonprofit Services

Fundraising training is often seen as a panacea for strengthening individual competency and organizational approach to raise contributed funds.  Organizations based in communities of color often critique fundraising training programs as less relevant to community conditions or useful to their group’s dynamics.  This session will present the distinct features of the Fundraising Academy for Communities of Color, developed by CompassPoint and Grassroots Fundraising Journal.  This session will share the details of the approach that includes fundraising coaching, peer learning, and intensive training, and will cover the distinct outcomes achieved by the 40 organizations that have completed the program.

Track: Financial Management and Fundraising

Collaboration in MSO Constituent Tracking Systems

Tim Mills-Groninger, IT Resource Center
Jeff Forster, Bayer Center for Nonprofit Management, Robert Morris University

Centralized data on your MSO is an important way to track the depth and breadth of services and relationships that exist between the provider and participants - both organizational clients and the individuals who represent them.  This session will share the approach and results of a collaborative development of a Microsoft Access database for MSOs to track organizations, training sessions, consulting engagements and other relationships.  The session will cover reasons for centralizing MSO data, a review of alternative methods for tracking client activity and progress, and theories of why database projects fail.  Emphasis will be on the impact, benefits, and challenges of centralizing stakeholder data.

Track: Technology

Exploring the Development of Advocacy Coalitions: How Nonprofits Can Work Together to Win Policy Change

Robin Katcher, Management Assistance Group
Inca Mohamed, Management Assistance Group

Few organizations alone have the power, resources, skills, relationships, and constituency base required to win important changes in legislation or public policy.  Coalitions can be an effective way to advance key policy goals.  In this interactive session, we will explore the various forms advocacy coalitions take, how they typically develop, and why they often start off strong and over time either fade away or fall apart.  Drawing on real case examples and participants' own experiences, we’ll examine approaches and structures capacity builders can use to help advocacy coalitions succeed.

Track: Advocacy and Social Change

Future Change: Discussions on Generational Shifts in Leadership

Frances Kunreuther, Building Movement Project
Caroline McAndrews, Building Movement Project
Helen Kim, Consultant (Oakland, CA)

This session will provide information about generational differences and provide examples of interactive techniques for capacity builders, consultants and other intermediaries to address generational shifts in leadership, based on a new guide from the Building Movement Project, 'Future Change: Discussions on Generational Shifts.' The session will provide information on the background and facts regarding the shift from leaders in the Baby Boom generation to those that follow; ways to combine the legacy long-term leaders bring and the new ideas of younger and newer leadership; and approaches to discussing the future of leadership across generational divides.

Track: Leadership and Governance

Is Your Work Making a Difference?

Terrie Temkin, NonProfit Management Solutions, Inc.
Christine Marquez, JVA Consulting, LLC

Capacity builders seek to strengthen the nonprofit sector.  Do we succeed? How do we know whether we are working on the highest playing field?  This session will challenge all consultants to look at their own practices as a reflection of the field. An interactive discussion will focus on the following questions and others:  How do you develop consistent quality in your services? How do you ensure continuous improvement and measure change? How are you advancing the field? What aren’t you doing that you need to be doing to strengthen the sector?  Presenters will facilitate group discussion of these questions, and record the shared lessons and thinking for dissemination to all Alliance members.

Track: Capacity Building Models and Strategies

Nonprofit Capacity Building for Community Change: The NAC Story

Vicki Asakura, Nonprofit Assistance Center
Barbara Fane, Nonprofit Assistance Center
Judy de Barros, Nonprofit Assistance Center

This interactive session will present the model developed by the Nonprofit Assistance Center (NAC) to build strong communities by strengthening organizations and leadership in grassroots organizations.  Participants will learn how the model was developed based on a community need, how it has evolved, and what strategies, tools, and programs have been developed to increase leadership and capacity in communities of color.  Discussion will include sharing of participant experiences and how this fosters strong leadership, organizations and communities. 

Track: Cultural Competency

The Sum and the Whole: Your Role in the Capacity Building Equation

Sharyn Konick, CONNECT Partnership For Nonprofit Solutions
Margarita McCullough, CONNECT Partnership For Nonprofit Solutions

Fragmented technical assistance networks can reduce the quality and effectiveness of services provided to nonprofits. This session will present a model of integrated and holistic capacity building services created to address complex issues faced by nonprofits. Additionally, participants will learn about an approach to reducing competitiveness and exclusivity, confronting politics and building trust within a capacity building community. Models and lessons learned from CONNECT's organizational assessment tool will also be shared.

Track: Collaboration