Build Capacity of Agencies and Individuals with Demonstrated Impact

It costs money to bring promising programs to scale and to provide emerging leaders with the skills and professional expertise needed to enhance their innate abilities.  It is also critical to help grantees increase their capacity to support themselves.

Opportunities

Funders can:

• Support social media trainings and the technology needed for implementation
• Underwrite the salaries of skilled development and communication personnel
• Fund workforce development such as peer counseling programs that help transition PLWHAs from service recipients to providers and empowering the most affected to participate in discussions on policy and resource allocation
• Leverage executive training programs on behalf of nonprofit leaders to enhance public speaking, management skills and financial literacy
• Provide funding and in-kind support for enhanced IT capacity
• Support financial management trainings, strategic planning, mergers

• Provide or fund professional development trainings for staff hired from the communities being served

Challenges

• It may be difficult to tie infrastructure funding and executive development to programmatic outcomes
• General operating support may run counter to a funder's traditional role of providing seed money for innovation
• Lack of standard measures for outcomes of capacity building efforts
• Capacity building measures may require multi-year funding before outcomes can be seen