The University of Delaware’s Nonprofit Capacity Building Program:

Seeking to Understand the Causes and Consequences of Poverty and to Improve the Quality of Life for All Delawareans

The nonprofit sector plays a significant role in the U.S. economy by producing and providing public goods and services that are not, and in many cases cannot be, delivered within the framework of the market or by government. More than most states, Delaware relies heavily on its nonprofit organizations to deliver services to individuals and communities, as it ranks in the bottom 10 percent of states devoting budget resources to social and community services. Despite its small size, Delaware ranks 12th among the 50 states in the percentage of its population that works in the nonprofit sector.

Recognizing that the skill and resiliency of Delaware’s nonprofit leaders will be tested sharply in the 21st century, as they respond to changes in the role of government and in social and economic structures, the University of Delaware’s Center for Community Research and Service has teamed up with the Delaware Association of Nonprofit Agencies (DANA) to create the Nonprofit Capacity Building Program.

The Nonprofit Capacity Building Program, the latest in a series of jointly sponsored efforts between the Center for Community Research and Service and DANA, offers nonprofit executives:

• information and referral services (Nonprofit Hotline, World Wide Web Sites, Nonprofit Resource Library);
• professional development (Advanced Nonprofit Management Certificate courses, professional development workshops/seminars/courses, Leadership Delaware, Nonprofit Executive Peer Forum); and
• technical assistance (Talent Bank).

Ultimately, the partners in the Nonprofit Capacity Building Program expect that these programs and services will help nonprofit organizations improve their ability to enhance the quality of life for all Delawareans.

While the Nonprofit Capacity Building Program is a fairly new program – the Nonprofit Hotline opened up in September 2000 and many of the courses, programs, and Talent Bank will begin in the 2000-2001 academic year – the Center for Community Research and Service and DANA have been partnering successfully since 1993. The following excerpts come from a conversation with Dr. Karen Curtis, policy scientist and associate professor at the Center, and Andrew Hastings, executive director of DANA, about the partners, the partnership, and the results that have occurred to date.

Notes: The University of Delaware has a long history of working in the community and supporting nonprofits and neighborhoods in Delaware. How would you describe the University’s sense of commitment to the public and nonprofit sectors?

Curtis: Our College (the College for Human Services, Education, and Public Policy) has been through a lot of name changes [see Timeline], but what remains consistent since our earliest work with neighborhoods as the Urban Agent Division in the 1970s is our mission of seeking to understand the causes and consequences of poverty and looking for ways to increase social and economic opportunity for individuals and communities. It is unusual and refreshing for a university to be as integrally involved in the community as we are – both through the University’s programmatic efforts and through the individual efforts of its faculty. Our goal is to integrate teaching, research, and public service – we call that the Delaware Model. All of the faculty and staff in our Center for Community Research and Service, for example, are members or leaders of nonprofit boards. There’s institutional commitment to doing community service work, and it is evidenced by the fact that our community work counts toward our evaluation and reward process as faculty members.

We also believe in a very broad definition of higher education here, one that includes creating usable social knowledge that can meet the needs of people in communities who have not necessarily had the advantage of higher education – with their input about what those needs are. We don’t go out and develop programs unless there are enough folks out there who believe they are important and beneficial. It’s a definition of higher education that not everyone would agree with. I think urban programs and those that emphasize nonprofit sector studies are more likely than others to solicit community input and involvement toward the specific goal of providing needed and usable information.

Notes: How did you come to focus on “the causes and consequences of poverty” and how did that lead you to build a program to strengthen nonprofit organizations?

Curtis: That focus stems directly from the University’s early work on urban problems, particularly from our participation in the Ford Foundation’s “Gray Areas” program in the 1960s. Traditionally, we have learned that community-based groups and neighborhood organizations are more directly responsive to the needs of the community than agency or government folks who are separated from the problem by layers of bureaucracy. To a certain extent, nonprofits represent the work and initiative of grassroots groups and neighborhood movements.

For example, food banks have only existed in the United States for the last 20 or 25 years. Before that, people in churches and communities were largely responsible for responding to the issue of hunger. While their work was benevolent and somewhat effective, the lack of organization among churches or community organizations resulted in a lot of duplication of effort and no economies of scale. St. Mary’s Church in Phoenix, Arizona, started a local warehouse for surplus food, and people started looking to them as a model. The Second Harvest national network grew out of that local model. It’s a good example of how local groups create institutions to respond to the needs they see. Eventually, when the issue or need reaches a certain size and public awareness increases, there is pressure for local, state, and federal governments to step in and support the models. It’s a typical pattern of how problems get solved in this country. We can see it in the areas of AIDS, substance abuse, and domestic violence as well as hunger.

Hastings: As Tocqueville observed, we are a “nation of associations.” As part of our Puritan ethic of self-reliance, Americans have always relied on neighbors and self-governing organizations to solve problems. The nonprofit sector is old in that sense. Many of the major social movements in this country have started at the hands of nonprofits and community-based groups: the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the environmental movement. There is a pattern in the United States that problem solving begins at the grassroots and moves up. Many important social decisions are made not by edict or fiat; they are clearly driven by individuals at the community level.

The strength of community and nonprofit organizations is that they are driven by mission – not by the bottom line. They are accountable to the causes and constituents they serve, and can therefore be more flexible as needs change and situations arise. Nonprofits are important, also, in that they serve as a watchdog and monitor to make sure that issues of the past don’t rear their ugly heads again – as the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count has done to shed light on the circumstances that lead to infant mortality and other issues concerning the welfare of children.

Notes: Why are capacity-building programs important?

Hastings: Many scholars and social theorists, Peter Drucker among them, say that the nonprofit sector in the United States is becoming increasingly important to our society, and that we need to build their capacity if they are going to accomplish the work that is being relegated to them. With the move toward devolution, the federal government creates funding streams and some program parameters, then shifts money to the states and counties and lets them contract out service delivery. One of DANA’s goals is to help these service delivery organizations maximize any money they receive, through cost-savings programs and through training and education.

In addition to building the capacity of individual nonprofits, however, programs like the Nonprofit Capacity Building Program serve an important function in raising “sector recognition” – getting nonprofits to recognize their commonality, even though they may represent diverse missions that range from housing or hunger to the arts. Once nonprofits start defining themselves as what they are, instead of what they’re not, they become less defensive. They gain the notion that they can work together to support each other’s causes and to be a voice for change that is different from the government or private sectors. Advocacy roles naturally result from greater sector recognition.

Notes: Give us an example of the kind of results that their advocacy can generate.

“Nonprofits have to be careful about when to join forces – they have to pick the important fights. But by collecting data and researching issues, then mobilizing a significant number of supporters, they can really have a voice in local and state policy.” --Andrew Hastings, Executive Director, Delaware Association of Nonprofit Agencies

Hastings: A lot of times with public policy and advocacy, people can’t see the outcomes, but the big picture is affected. For example, each year, the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce produces a budget proposal in response to the Governor’s budget proposal. Almost always, the budget that is passed falls somewhere between the parameters set forth by both entities. That’s compelling. We hope that at some point DANA can also publish a budget proposal that represents the needs and viewpoints of our members to help inform the debate about funding and priorities.

Another way we’ve had an impact is our involvement to defeat the Istook Amendment. A coalition of our members presented a document siting 30 reasons why they did not support the Amendment. We can’t make a direct correlation, but all three of our state senators voted against it.

We also formed a coalition of nonprofits and grantmakers to advocate against a City of Wilmington proposal to tax the property of nonprofit organizations. The mayor’s office publicly stated that 47% of all city property was tax-exempt. After an extensive analysis, DANA found that only 14% of the property within the city was owned by charities. We found that the majority of tax-exempt property consisted of abandoned buildings owned by the City of Wilmington, parking garages, federal government property, and tax abatements given to profit-making enterprises. DANA led the effort to educate both city officials and our members on the legislation’s impact, and prevented its passage.

Although nonprofits have few resources – financial and otherwise – to commit to advocacy, they do possess an enormous amount of goodwill in the community. Using their resources strategically, collecting the necessary data, and then mobilizing their supporters, they can have a strong voice in state and local policy.

Curtis: In the Nonprofit Capacity Building Program’s certificate course, we offer a module on advocacy and political action. Coming into the course, many nonprofits view themselves as being in competition for funding. As Drew said about sector recognition, we need to get nonprofit leaders to look beyond being competitive and show them that working together can yield some pretty important results that meet their shared needs.

Notes: What issues most concern you about the future of nonprofits in the State?

Curtis: I am concerned about accountability issues. Standards are being developed by government and other institutions and funding sources without the input of the people who actually do the work. The result is unrealistic, undoable outcomes that have no relevance to the program work of the nonprofits. So we have seen that many nonprofits create ways to work around these standards (and the media love to bring these cases to the public’s attention). The Center for Community Research and Service and DANA want to increase the capacity of organizations to be better managers so they can be more accountable. We need to help them learn how to use the data and statistics they collect to better inform their agencies’ decision making. And we’d like to help them advocate for more reasonable and meaningful accountability measures.

Hastings: The perception is that some nonprofits resist accountability standards because the public may find out that they are not operating in an honest or responsible way. This may be the case for some nonprofits, and those bad seeds negatively affect people’s perceptions of the sector. DANA is promoting accountability standards, because we want to bring positive attention to the nonprofits that are doing well. We want to be able to prove their efficiency and effectiveness.

Nonprofits in Maryland, Colorado, and Minnesota, for example, have adopted and advanced nonprofit standards of excellence. We are working on doing the same in Delaware. We need to be sure to attach measurable performance standards to the list, and to make these standards accessible to nonprofits and the public. Eventually, we would like to offer a DANA certification process – like a “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” – to help strong nonprofits get funding and support from the government and foundations. Any time we can make nonprofits stronger and more efficient, then DANA is doing its job.

Notes: What aspects of the partnership between the Center and DANA are you most proud of?

Hastings: I’m excited about the possibility of providing the kind of research, information, and training that nonprofits need and want with help from the Center. The Nonprofit Library is going to be an invaluable resource, especially for small nonprofits or those with volunteer staff who need more information about communities, and about problems needing to be addressed. Another way we can really support nonprofits is through technology and technology training. For example, the nonprofit tenants in the Community Service Building expressed a need for technology training. We have been running workshops for them that really get to the kinds of tasks and skills they need for their work. Our Web sites (www.delawarenonprofit.org) and the University’s DiamondNet offer Delaware nonprofits important links to resources, funders, government partners, and one another.

I think the Executive Peer Forums and other peer support programs will serve a critical need too. Being a nonprofit manager or staff person can be isolating. The day-to-day demands of nonprofit executive positions do not leave them much time to think strategically about their organizations, and they are often faced with making decisions for which there are no clear precedents. The peer forums will give nonprofit executives the opportunity to think more strategically about their organizations, in a setting where they can discuss their decisions with other executives facing similar challenges. Eventually, we hope to add peer mentoring and peer partnering to the program to offer an even greater support network.

“I went through the Nonprofit Leadership Certificate course while still a graduate student in the M.P.A. program. The speakers, trainers, and materials provided a wonderful blend of information and policy that I needed to know to be successful in the nonprofit sector. One of the additional benefits for me was the peer networking. I met and learned with and from a high-quality group of people, many of whom I still call upon for advice from their experiences and wisdom. I came away from the course with a feeling that I wasn’t all alone – that I had been through nonprofit boot camp with other people who had similar ideas and beliefs. The whole process gave me a greater sense of the credibility of the nonprofit sector, and I felt much more legitimate in my role after going through the coursework and experiencing the camaraderie of my classmates. We were all genuinely happy for each other’s successes.” --Patricia Campbell, M.P.A., 1997 University of Delaware Nonprofit Leadership Certificate recipient and former Coordinator of the University’s Nonprofit Community Resource Center

Curtis: One unique aspect of our partnership is that 40 full-time students in the M.A., M.P.A., and Ph.D. programs work as interns at the Center and for nonprofit agencies in Wilmington. We provide a stipend for all of them, either through external fundraising (like that we receive from area banks) or through state-funded public service assistantships for citizens of Delaware. These students experience some pretty difficult challenges and learn the nuts and bolts of running nonprofit agencies, while really serving as valuable resources to those agencies. Many of our students who do internships with nonprofits get job offers from those organizations when they graduate.

We are also excited about the Nonprofit Hotline – (866) 466-6776 or (866) 4-NONPROF (a toll-free call in Delaware). The Hotline is run out of the Center’s offices in the Community Service Building and staffed by a Delaware Public Ally. With faculty supervision, some of the students in the M.A., M.P.A., and Ph.D. programs have created a manual of frequently asked questions for use on the Hotline. For example, we get a lot of calls from people who want to start nonprofit organizations and want to know how to do that. Our Hotline staff will be able to walk them through the process, but more importantly will be able to dissuade people who do not really understand what it means to have a nonprofit designation.

We know that the partnership with DANA follows the University’s legacy for public and community service. The Center can share resources, provide referrals, serve as guest lecturers for the practical programs and outreach that DANA does. DANA helps us to send research and information downstream to the grassroots and community levels and sends more data and research challenges back upstream to us.