Capacity Building Issues

 

HIP promotes capacity building of small to medium-sized Latino-led nonprofits. By capacity building, we mean contributing to the organizational development and growth of nonprofits by providing grant dollars to strengthen areas such as strategic planning, fundraising capabilities, staff and board development, technology, marketing and communications strategies, financial management, and program evaluations, among others. 

These are some examples of the types of capacity building efforts that HIP supports:

Current Programs

Funder’s Collaborative for Strong Latino Communities

The Funders’ Collaborative for Strong Latino Communities was created to address key issues of sustainability, growth and long-term development faced by Latino nonprofit organizations, while also cultivating the next generation of Latino leaders. Capacity building grants have been made to Latino nonprofit organizations to support projects such as the enhancement of their resource development capabilities, development of their board and staff leadership, and improvement of their governance structures.  Through the Funders’ Collaborative, HIP has provided capacity-building grants and training to more than 500 Latino-led, Latino serving nonprofits in 16 sites in the U.S. and three in Latin America.

California Health Leaders Project

HIP’s California Health Leaders Project builds the capacity of nonprofit organizations that promote healthy Latino communities in California. In early 2011, HIP awarded $165,000 in capacity-building grants ranging from $8,000 to $16,000 over one or two years. Grants were awarded to build organizational capacity in areas including fundraising, financial management, and strategic planning.

Community Leadership Project

HIP’s Community Leadership Project builds the capacity of Latino-led, Latino-serving nonprofit organizations in California’s San Joaquin Valley. In 2010, HIP awarded $270,000 in multi-year, capacity-building grants to six Latino nonprofits. Grantees are using these funds to build their capacity in a variety of ways, including board development, strategic planning, and diversifying their funding sources to increase long-term organizational sustainability.

Why We Care

HIP’s extensive work in capacity building is based on the theory of change that strengthening Latino leaders and organizations will strengthen Latino communities.  Investing in the programs and services of an organization without investing in their infrastructure and leadership limits the potential for an organization to become more sustainable, effective, and innovative. 

Latino communities receive less than two percent of all foundation dollars and, of that amount, few dollars go towards capacity building. The majority of Latino nonprofit organizations are fairly young and small, with annual budgets of less than one million dollars. These organizations face a Catch-22 when it comes to attaining foundation funding:  they are considered too small and too limited in their capacity to receive grants from many foundations, yet it’s difficult for them to raise funds or get to scale without initial investments in their general operations and capacity.

It is an essential part of HIP's mission to bridge these gaps by increasing philanthropic investments in emerging Latino organizations and leaders, and particularly in the building of their capacity. HIP has been the first institutional funder to invest in many Latino grassroots organizations, and the growth in organizational capabilities has often enabled our grantees to attain funding from other sources and to get to scale.

What We've Learned

As a result of our capacity-building work in collaboration with funders across the country, HIP has identified a number of promising philanthropic strategies for building the capacity of the Latino civil sector:

• Capacity-building means more than just hiring consultants. Hiring expert consultants can be an important component of organizational development, but that alone is not enough to build long-term capacity. Work with an external consultant should always include a clear plan for creating tools, systems, and knowledge that will remain with the organization after the capacity-building is complete.  Rather than simply hiring a “grant-writer,” for example, an effective fundraising consultant should train staff and volunteers in proposal writing and help them to develop systems for identifying and cultivating prospective funders.
• Cultural competence matters. Cultural and linguistic competence makes consultants and training programs more effective. Even if all of an organization’s staff speak English, some may be more comfortable speaking in Spanish or Portuguese, and there may be volunteers and board members with limited English proficiency. Other organizations may not require bilingual resources, but may still benefit more from experts who have experience working with other grassroots organizations serving communities of color.  It’s important to help nonprofits find and access resources for organizational development needs that match their needs.
• Building a diverse funding base requires a paradigm shift.  Some Latino nonprofits grow quickly as a result of one or more government contracts—a source of funding that, unfortunately, is often difficult to sustain over the long term. Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet to help these organizations develop a diverse funding base. Our grantees who have successfully built a more diverse funding base report that it required a major cultural shift in the organization, with staff, board, and the executive director all undergoing training on fundraising and devoting more time and resources across the board to fund development.
• Organizational development does not always proceed in a straight line. The process of building organizational capacity is a complex one, and almost always includes setbacks. However, sometimes even the apparent setbacks are an important part of building capacity. For example, many HIP grantees have reported that, in the course of a board development process, a number of their board members abruptly resigned, partly as a result of a deeper understanding of their responsibilities and obligations.  This almost invariably necessitates a longer time frame for building the board, but can also have positive effects: it creates the opportunity to recruit new board members who have a clearer understanding of their role from the outset, laying the groundwork for stronger governance.

National Evaluation of the Funders’ Collaborative for Strong Latino Communities

This evaluation report of the Funders’ Collaborative was completed in 2008 by Arete Consulting. It assesses the impact of HIP’s capacity-building work, identifying successes as well as lessons learned.

The 2010 Census: What the Numbers Mean and How Funders Can Respond

This HIP Philanthropy Lab was recorded in October 2011 and features a panel of funders discussing philanthropic strategies for responding to the rapid growth of Latino populations across the U.S. Capacity-building is identified by several of the panelists as a key strategy, particularly in areas where the Latino community—and the Latino nonprofit sector—are relatively new.

What Our Members and Partners are Doing

In addition to the many funding partners who have participated in the Funders’ Collaborative, a number of HIP members and partners provide direct capacity-building support for nonprofit organizations. These include The Philadelphia Foundation, The Rhode Island Foundation, and The Hartford Foundation, among many others.