Reimagining Capacity Building: Navigating Culture, Systems & Power

Strengthening nonprofit organizations is an essential part of our work as grantmakers to ensure that nonprofits have the resources they need to address today’s most pressing concerns. Indeed, the majority of staffed foundations — 86 percent — do just that, invest in organizational strengthening in areas such as leadership, fundraising, evaluation, communications and technology.

While capacity building is a critical part of our work, traditional models of capacity building tend not to account for culture, systems and power in their design, failing to keep equity centered in their approach. GEO’s latest publication, Reimagining Capacity Building, explores principles for centering equity in our capacity building efforts, explores the way inequities can show up within programs and offers steps we can take to address and mitigate those inequities. Join this interactive and engaging two-hour workshop to do a deeper dive into the practices highlighted in this resource, hear from grantmakers working to implement these concepts in their work and develop action steps you can apply to your capacity building efforts.

Objectives: Participants will:

• Learn the principles necessary to centering equity within capacity building efforts.
• Hear from peers about the challenges and successes of embedding equity-centered principles within their capacity building practices.
• Explore ways to mitigate inequitable capacity building practices and explore how to embed these practices into your work.
• Develop individual action steps they can apply to their capacity building work after the workshop.

This session kicks off Philanthropy Massachusetts’ 2022 Power & Equity series of programming.