What We Do: Capacity Building | BE4SI
Part of our series on the services BE4SI provides to nonprofits and social enterprises in Europe, the United States, and beyond.
Capacity building is one of those phrases that can mean almost anything, which is part of the problem. One consultant may use it to describe staff training. Another may mean technology. A funder may mean governance. Somebody else may use it to describe organizational development, fundraising, leadership coaching, or almost anything else that makes an organization stronger.
I think it is more useful to start with a much simpler question: What does your organization need to be able to do that it cannot reliably do now?
That might mean building a fundraising system, improving financial processes, strengthening a board, developing staff skills, replacing an inadequate database, clarifying internal responsibilities, or creating practices that allow an organization to handle more work without simply asking already-overloaded people to work harder. The common thread is not the particular intervention. It is the organization’s ability to perform its work effectively and sustain that ability over time.
That last part matters. There has been a growing shift in international development and philanthropy from talking about “capacity building” as something an outside expert does to an organization toward talking about capacity strengthening, local ownership, and mutual accountability. Organizations such as World Vision and LINC explicitly describe their approaches in terms of working alongside local organizations, recognizing existing strengths, and supporting organizations to identify their own priorities rather than simply importing an outside solution.
I think that distinction is important. If I come in, tell you what is wrong, install my preferred system, train everybody for a day, and disappear, I may have delivered a consulting engagement, but I have not necessarily built much capacity. Capacity should remain with the organization when the consultant leaves.
That does not mean an outside consultant is always unnecessary. Sometimes an organization simply does not have the expertise internally. Sometimes it has the expertise but not the time. Sometimes a problem has been visible for so long that everybody inside the organization has stopped seeing it clearly. And sometimes the immediate need is to create enough additional capacity to get through a period of growth or change without exhausting the people already doing the work.
The challenge is figuring out which situation you are actually in.
If the capability you are missing is permanent, hiring somebody may make much more sense than paying a consultant. If you need a particular piece of technology, buying the right technology may be the answer. If your staff already know how to do something but are overloaded, another training session may simply give them one more thing to feel guilty about not implementing. And if the underlying problem is leadership, structure, or organizational culture, a new spreadsheet is unlikely to fix it.
That diagnostic piece is where I can help. I can look with you at what the organization currently has, where the gaps actually are, what is creating those gaps, and what needs to change. Sometimes the answer will be work that I can do with you. Sometimes it will be a matter of helping your existing team develop the capability themselves. Sometimes the right answer will be to hire somebody, purchase a system, restructure a role, or bring in a specialist.
I am particularly interested in capacity building when it is connected to a real organizational need rather than treated as an abstract improvement exercise. If you are growing, taking on new funding, changing your programs, expanding into new markets or countries, or finding that the systems that worked when you were smaller are no longer working, there may be a genuine capacity issue underneath the immediate problem.
I am less interested in helping organizations become “high performing” simply because that sounds good. An organization does not need every possible system, a complicated dashboard, or a binder full of policies. It needs the capabilities that allow it to do its work well.
This is also not a service I would recommend if you are looking for a quick fix. Capacity takes time, particularly when the issue involves people, relationships, or organizational habits. It can also require resources that a consultant cannot manufacture. If your organization does not have enough money to sustain the people or systems it needs, capacity building may help you understand the problem, but it cannot substitute for adequate funding.
My role is therefore not to make your organization dependent on me. It is to help you become less dependent on outside help. If I am doing this work properly, you should understand more about how your organization works, know what needs attention, have stronger internal capability, and be better able to decide what you need next.
And if what you really need is a specialist in IT, HR, accounting, legal compliance, or another technical field, I will tell you. There is no prize for pretending to be the right consultant for everything. Sometimes the most useful thing I can do is help you define the problem clearly enough that you can find the person who is.
On BE4SI, we’re talking nonprofits/NGOs, social enterprise, philanthropy, civil society, and social impact— filtered through U.S. and Central/Eastern European lenses. We’d be honored to have you as a subscriber! ⚡
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