Public Policy Commons^™

Capacity-Building Catalysts: A Qualitative Assessment Of Nonprofit Capacity Building By Community Foundations In Illinois, Benjamin Bingle

The Foundation Review

Community foundations have the potential to promote collaborative learning in a variety of ways as conveners, funders, and, in some instances, as nonprofit capacity builders. Yet little is known about what community foundations are doing to support capacity building. This article focuses specifically on nonprofit capacity building that is funded, organized, or led by community foundations in Illinois.

First, this article identifies the capacity-building efforts of those community foundations. Next, it summarizes results from a qualitative survey to share insights from leaders of the foundations that offer capacity-building opportunities. These data shed new light on our collective understanding of how …

Growth Of Community-Based Giving Days In The United States: The Landscape And Effects, Catherine Humphries Brown, Abhishek Bhati

The Foundation Review

Over the past decade, local and regional community foundations across the United States have adopted “giving days” as a means to build awareness, bolster community pride, and raise money for local nonprofit organizations. Despite the increasing prevalence of giving days, little scholarly research has empirically examined this phenomenon and its impact, particularly at the local and regional levels.

To address these gaps, this article shares the findings of a study that examined similarities and differences across communities’ giving days and sought to evaluate the extent to which those days led to more giving at the community level.

While the study …