Promising Practices for Improving the
Capacity of
Faith- and Community-Based Organizations
Table of Contents |
Chapter 6: Sub-Awards | Chapter 8: Strengthening the Capacity of Intermediaries
Chapter 7.
Serving as a Bridge Between Organizations
In addition to the direct services they provided through group trainings and technical assistance, as well as support offered through the sub-awards, the intermediaries served as bridges, or liaisons, between their constituent organizations and other organizations, businesses and government agencies. Succeeding in this role required intermediaries to have external relationships that were both broad and deep.
In some instances, intermediaries devoted substantial resources to making links, or forging partnerships, between their constituents and other like-minded nonprofit institutions, or they brought larger numbers of organizations together to create viable and effective coalitions. In this role, intermediaries served as brokers, mediators and representatives for their constituent organizations and the issues they supported. (See the box on the next page for a description of an intermediary's work with one community-based organization that is often involved in larger community partnerships.)
In other cases, intermediaries helped their constituent FBOs and CBOs make connections that could help them secure funding. This is a potentially important role for intermediaries, as grantmakers increasingly seek and favor proposals from collaboratives or partnerships rather than from individual organizations. Particularly for projects where the goal is to have neighborhood-wide or community-wide impact, grantmakers often require collaborative efforts because they prevent duplication, draw on the multiple skills and interests of disparate organizations, and, it is believed, make for stronger programming. In response, larger nonprofit organizations (and even entities of local government) often find themselves seeking partners to make their proposals more competitive. The organizations they seek are frequently those with strong connections to residents of low-income communities.
Promising Practices
Linking Grassroots Organizations with FundingIntermediaries drew on their network of resources to introduce grassroots organizations to potential partners and funders that they would not otherwise have access to.
JVA Consulting. JVA facilitated partnerships between organizations participating in its CCF project and other organizations and agencies that were submitting proposals for federal funding. Some of these links were with nonprofit organizations that were larger than the grassroots organizations working with JVA; at other times, the links were with local or state government entities that were in search of organizations capable of piloting new program models.
For example, JVA connected Colorado's Department of Corrections to one of its CCF organizations, when the department was seeking an FBO or CBO with which to partner on a proposal that would create a mentoring program in a low-income community. The potential benefits were mutual: the city agency could write a stronger proposal because the collaboration extended its reach into a neighborhood where it might not otherwise have the contacts, legitimacy and goodwill that the grassroots organization possessed. And the organization, never having previously submitted a proposal for federal funding, gained a strong partner in its first effort, thereby increasing its chances of being funded.
JVA believes that this is one of the most important functions it serves as an intermediary. As one staff member said, JVA's "greatest asset is being a bridge between the organization on the ground and the organization with a track record who is more competitive in getting the grant." Once the match has been made, JVA often works with the two organizations to help them jointly write a strong, competitive proposal that incorporates promising practices and delineates the advantages of the partnership. Indeed, many proposals submitted by groups that JVA initially brought together have gone on to receive significant funding from the federal government or other funding opportunities.
In determining which of the organizations participating in its CCF project are likely candidates for joint or solo submissions for federal funding, JVA uses its organizational assessment, as well as its own interactions with the key parties, to determine whether the FBO or CBO has the capacity to meet the proposal's eligibility requirements and to implement the program should the proposal be successful. JVA's project director estimates that 10 to 15 percent of its CCF participants meet these criteria, although it also depends on current funding availability and opportunities.
To help prepare organizations for such partnerships, as well as to introduce them to writing federal grant proposals on their own, JVA's technical assistance and training strategy includes educating its constituent organizations about the federal grants process. The intermediary requires CCF organizations to attend six mandatory training sessions, one of which is devoted to accessing federal grants. The workshop incorporates strategies developed over JVA's 17 years of successfully writing federal grants and includes information on how to research available grants, tips for analyzing the grant application and finding the right partner, steps in writing the grant application, and guidance in understanding financial requirements. Successfully applying what it learned from its work with JVA, one of the CCF organizations has gone on to receive a $50,000 grant on its own from HHS.
Creating Partnerships Among OrganizationsIntermediaries attempted to increase the effectiveness of neighborhood coalitions and partnerships by mobilizing new organizations to join the groups, helping member organizations develop effective working relationships, and training them to increase their impact.
Three of the non-CCF intermediaries, in particular, used this approach to capacity building. The Palm Beach County Local Initiatives Support Network (LISC) works primarily with community development organizations (CDCs), whose success in generating sufficient financing for projects is affected by local and national economic conditions and policies. Thus, LISC believes that its responsibilities include advocating for local CDCs, as well as convening and organizing them to respond to policy developments and legislation that may affect their work. Additionally, LISC has trained local CDC executive directors to engage and educate policymakers, and has linked the CDCs to a statewide community development coalition through which the Palm Beach County organizations can advocate for legislative changes at the state level that will increase opportunities for the success of their community-specific projects.
Urban Strategies Council. The Urban Strategies Council also serves as a convener to build and support partnerships among community organizations that are working toward similar goals. In this role, the council facilitates meetings of community organizations, including detailed work such as developing meeting agendas and organizing conference calls, as well as coordinating and facilitating strategic planning and decision-making processes among partnership members. When needed, the council also serves as a mediator among the partners. Another key element of the council's work in strengthening community collaboratives involves providing a variety of community- or neighborhood-specific data that can be utilized in proposals. The council also trains organizations in data collection and analysis, which enables partnerships to better assess, plan and manage their community initiatives.
Like the Urban Strategies Council, Good Samaritan Ministries (GSM) helps groups—in this case, churches—work together to address community issues. The Neighborhood Alliance project, spearheaded by GSM, organizes neighboring churches to assess community needs and run programs that address those needs. In this effort, GSM is helping the networks of churches to work side by side with government, business and nonprofit agencies. The intermediary's pivotal role has involved recruiting churches to join the network, and working with them to develop the overall goals, identify the roles of member churches, and formalize the agreements in a document signed by all participating churches. GSM facilitates monthly roundtable meetings among all the partners, where they work on joint planning, coordination and evaluation of their efforts.
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A CBO Story Organization: East Bay Asian Youth Center Intermediary: Urban Strategies Council
Technical assistance from the Urban Strategies Council, located in Oakland, California, has addressed this problem. The Council helps local community-based organizations collect data, with the hope that they will use the findings to plan, manage and assess community-change initiatives. The intermediary's approach is to "democratize" data analysis and policymaking. Data have traditionally been collected, interpreted and used by experts. "Democratizing" data is intended to empower citizens and community groups by providing them with access to data and the tools to use those data to develop their own arguments about what is best for their communities. The Urban Strategies Council has now been assisting EBAYC for more than a decade. It initially provided the organization with training and technical assistance on data collection and coalition building in connection with an EBAYC initiative that organized parents and youth from five area junior high schools to advocate for educational reform in the early 1990s. The council has since provided additional technical assistance in data collection techniques, including the development of survey measures, for several other EBAYC projects. |
Table of Contents |
Chapter 6: Sub-Awards | Chapter 8: Strengthening the Capacity of Intermediaries