Offering the CCAT® to Your Grantees

Strengthen and support your nonprofit partners.

Through TCC’s guidance, we have been able to demonstrate to our Board that our nonprofits are working better, smarter; they’re asking the right questions and finding their own solutions… We’ve also proven to nonprofits through TCC’s structure that we will help them to design a program that works for them.

—Barbara Alford, President, Wiregrass Foundation

TCC Group’s Core Capacity Assessment Tool (CCAT) is the most cost-effective way to provide your grantees and nonprofit partners with deep strategic insight into their organizations. The CCAT makes it possible for nonprofit leaders to improve the organizational areas that will most immediately help them achieve their impact. Learn more about how the CCAT works.

By offering the CCAT to your grantees or partners, you will:

Increase the impact of your investment

Without organizational sustainability, your grantees risk being able to achieve their programmatic outcomes. The CCAT allows them to assess and strategically strengthen the areas that will matter most – helping them realize their mission, and enabling you to increase your return on investment and attain your philanthropic goals.

Inform your grantmaking with grantee perspectives and data

Offering the CCAT to your grantees makes it easy for you to aggregate data across organizations to identify common strengths, challenges, and capacity-building priorities. Analyzing grantee data can help you target and customize your investment in peer learning and cohort-based capacity building support. With reliable data coming directly from your grantees, your program design will be participant-driven and responsive to your grantee partners’ needs.

Deepen partnerships with your grantees

By engaging your grantees through the CCAT, you signal your commitment to their ongoing organizational health. CCAT data offers funders an ideal starting point for strategic conversations with grantee partners to help them grow and more effectively make a difference in their communities.

The CCAT can be provided by funders, fiscal agency organizations, and management support organizations.

Engage Your Grantees Through:

Pairing the CCAT with Programmatic Grants

A nonprofit’s ability to deliver relevant, high-impact programs directly depends on its ability to build a solid institutional core. Pairing a programmatic grant with organizational capacity support empowers nonprofit partners to scale and grow sustainably. When a nonprofit participates in the CCAT alongside a programmatic grant, it can proactively identify capacity gaps, develop a plan to address areas of risk, and increase the likelihood of sustaining programs beyond the grant period.

General Operating and Capacity Building Grants

General operating grants are essential! But when you combine them with capacity building support, you maximize your philanthropic investment. By providing grantees with an actionable capacity building plan tied to specific prioritized goals, funders make it possible for grantees to most efficiently and effectively contribute to their communities.

TCC Group’s expert consultation and coaching on CCAT results help nonprofits manage change effectively. Your grantee partners will demonstrate impact by quantifying their organizational capacity. Periodic re-administration of the CCAT enables both grantees and funders to appreciate the effectiveness of their capacity building investments. (Please note that the CCAT is a learning tool—it is never permitted to be used by funders as a screening tool to determine which organizations to support.)

Participant-Driven Capacity Building Initiatives

Read how the Kansas Health Foundation used the CCAT to design a capacity building program for health equity in Kansas.

For funders looking for a “more than money” approach to supporting grantee partners, the CCAT can lay the groundwork for a capacity building and learning initiative. By analyzing data from a cohort of CCAT participants, you can identify your grantee partners’ most pressing needs and tailor support to organizations based on capacity characteristics such as lifecycle stage and focus areas. Whereas a grantee survey often highlights visible issues such as staffing and fundraising capacity, the CCAT’s comprehensive model provides deep insight in areas like adaptive capacity, leadership, and culture, and incorporates perspectives from both staff and Board members. This information provides funders the chance to economically and inclusively strengthen their communities’ capacity. The result is a targeted and strategic capacity building initiative that is directly informed by grantee needs.

Ready to get started?

Purchase the CCAT

Learn more about how the CCAT works.

Connect with certified CCAT Facilitators in your area

Wondering if the CCAT is right for your organization? Drop us a line at CCAThelp@tccgrp.com.