Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Capacity In Grassroots Nonprofit Organizations : Perspectives From Emergency Food Providers, Bethany Slater

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Scholars generally agree that organizational capacity influences a nonprofit’s sustainability and overall effectiveness. Identified challenges include defining capacity, operationalizing it and understanding how capacity affects effectiveness. This research project seeks to explore these challenges and examine the construct of capacity from the perspectives of 195 emergency food program practitioners across eleven counties in upstate New York. The qualitative study aims to understand “what” capacity is; the quantitative study aims to understand “how” capacity is operationalized and the mixed method study examines the “why this matters”, through asking how capacity influences effectiveness.