WELCOME
Faith-based and community organizations perform miracles every day. From feeding the hungry to rescuing the downtrodden, these organizations are making dramatic contributions to communities, large and small, across America.
Yet all too often, the employees of these organizations must tolerate high levels of stress and burnout, and many face persistent shortages of information, technology, training, and staff to do the job well. The nonprofit sector too often expects its work force to succeed in spite of organizational weaknesses that would collapse most businesses.
Most nonprofits use their limited resources to market themselves to the same donors and foundations year after year. There's little if any investing in organizational infrastructure or staff development. Compared to the for-profit sector, the nonprofit world is back in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Japan was consistently outperforming American businesses. We are only beginning to understand that to obtain good outcomes, we have to invest in building strong organizations – by investing in organizational capacity building.
Organizational capacity encompasses virtually everything an organization uses to achieve its mission, from desks and chairs to programs and people. Measured at any given point in time, capacity is an output of basic organization activities such as raising money; forging partnerships; organizing work; recruiting and training board members, leaders, and employees; generating ideas; managing budgets; and evaluating programs. Once created, organizational capacity is consumed in mission-related program activities such as treating patients, feeding the hungry, building housing, supporting children of incarcerated parents, educating students, and training workers. Once expended, it is regenerated through the same organizational activities that created it in the first place.
The challenge is to make a case for organizational investment at a time when nonprofits have little discretionary funding and must often choose between computers and kids, training and treatment, salaries and seniors.
As part of our commitment to support faith-based and community initiatives, we produce the NRC e-Newsletter. The newsletter is a bi-weekly publication packed with useful, practical information that organization staff and leadership can read in the morning and apply in the afternoon.
The publication that you have before you is a distillation of articles and resources from October 2003 to September 2005 that were found to be most useful. Across eleven key management categories, you will find diverse resources such as "Great Ways to Build Winning Collaboration" and "Developing a Fundraising Plan" to "Creating a Winning Work Culture" and "Simplify meetings to stir creativity."
We trust that you will discover value in these resouces. Please read, reflect, challenge, and incorporate. Take what you find of most value and leave the rest behind. Then forward the entire document to a friend, or subscribe to the newsletter yourself.
We wish you continued success in your vital work. You are creating miracles every day.
As part of the President's support of faith-based and community organizations through the Compassion Capital Fund, the National Resource Center provides capacity-building technical assistance to funded intermediary organizations and those faith- and community-based organizations they support. For a complete description of the Compassion Capital Fund and the work of the National Resource Center, we invite you to visit our Website
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