January 23, 2003 | Read Time: 1 minute
Strengthening Nonprofit Performance: a Funder’s Guide to Capacity Building, by Paul Connolly and Carol Lukas, Foundations are increasingly supporting not just the programs of nonprofit organizations, but also projects to improve their organizational efficiency, the authors write.
Paul Connolly is senior vice president of the Conservation Company, in New York, which provides management consulting to nonprofit groups; Carol Lukas is director of national services at the Wilder Center for Communities, a program of the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, in St. Paul. Their book offers advice for grant makers who want to help charities improve their management and governance practices to better carry out their missions. It outlines the strengths and challenges of methods that foundations have tried—including making operating-support grants, financing research and conferences about the best practices of different types of charities, and providing direct management assistance. Costs of such projects may vary greatly: examples cited include a project arranged by the Rinconda Ventures Foundation, in San Francisco, that mobilized volunteers to provide free consulting services to charities, and a $750,000 investment by the Edyth Bush Charitable Foundation, in Winter Park, Fla., to establish a Nonprofit Leadership Center.
An appendix includes a series of worksheets designed to help grant makers assess the needs of nonprofit groups in their regions and to develop budgets and evaluation plans for efforts to help charities improve their operations.
Publisher: Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, 919 Lafond Avenue, St. Paul, Minn. 55104-2108; (651) 659-6024 or (800) 274-6024; fax (651) 642-2061; books@wilder.org; http://www.wilder.org; 176 pages; $30.
