The Weingart Foundation
There are more than 30,000 nonprofit organizations in Los Angeles County—more than any other county in the nation and more than most states. Many of them have received funding from the Weingart Foundation, which authorized grants of more than $856 million between 1972 and 2009 to support a variety of social service, educational, and community programs.
In 2008, the board and staff of the Foundation decided they wanted a better understanding of the health of the nonprofit sector in southern California. They were especially interested in finding out what nonprofits need in terms of capacity building, who they go to for support, how they pay for it, and what kind of services they receive. The Foundation staff wanted hard data to ascertain if the capacity-building sector was as robust as it could be.
An In-Depth Look at Service Providers, Consumers and Funders
"When we talk about capacity building, we're talking about those things that allow nonprofit organizations to better and more efficiently carry out their mission," said Fred Ali, President and CEO of the Weingart Foundation. "We like to think of our grantmaking process as an exercise in capacity building, and our initial thoughts were to evaluate our own work in the field." Ultimately, however, the board opted to take a broader look at what was going on across the region.
Weingart turned to TCC Group to conduct research and draw insights directly from nonprofits, funders, and capacity-building service providers in Los Angeles County. Through surveys, interviews, and focus groups, TCC heard from more than 1,600 nonprofit leaders. TCC gathered further information from more than 250 current and former Weingart grantees and grant applicants, who completed TCC's online Core Capacity Assessment Tool and shared their specific capacity-building needs and experiences. Conducting a scan of capacity-building providers in the region, TCC took inventory of available services.
A New Approach and a New Conversation
Top among TCC's findings was that nonprofits in the region are strong in visionary leadership and understanding community needs, but weaker in other key capacities, such as strategic learning, board development, program evaluation, fundraising and human resource management. Most nonprofits are not well-informed consumers of consulting and training services. TCC also found that capacity-building providers are disjointed, expensive, and unable to accommodate the demand for services. Overall, TCC recommended that the philanthropic community could play a larger role in coordinating and strengthening the nonprofit capacity-building system in the region. Download the report, "Fortifying L.A.'s Nonprofit Organizations: Capacity-Building Needs and Services in Los Angeles County," here.
As a result of the study, Ali said, "We decided the best way to tackle this is from the consumer end. If nonprofits can become more knowledgeable consumers of services and about their needs to improve their own capacity, they will be able to drive changes in the system. That's the hope."
Setting the wheels in motion, the study has started productive conversations among funders, nonprofits, and service providers in Southern California. One immediate outcome of the study and conversations that followed was the release of a planning grant RFP by 10 funders, including the Weingart Foundation. The planning grant will lead to the development of an innovative, technology-based information exchange that will connect Los Angeles nonprofits to appropriate and quality capacity building services.
