A LEARNING NETWORK
Capacity building that meets nonprofits where they are
We are building a community of funders, nonprofits, and capacity builders across Massachusetts experimenting with how capacity building gets done in the nonprofit sector. Right now, eight organizations are running funded experiments, sixteen funders have shared how they think about this work, and our community is learning in public along the way.
Anchored by the Barr Foundation, facilitated by Systems Design Lab.
“If you're perpetually in a space of having to navigate scarcity, best practices don't matter. You're just trying to survive.”
— Greater Boston nonprofit leader
Since 2023, research across Massachusetts — from a landscape scan to focus groups to behavioral research — has shown that nonprofit leaders operate under scarce money, scarce time, and scarce bandwidth.
We’ve learned that survival mode crowds out long-term thinking, so the design of capacity supports matters as much as access to them.
In 2025, a table of funders, nonprofit leaders, and capacity builders turned years of research into design principles, and in 2026, a cohort of organizations is putting those principles to through eight innovative experiments.
What we're learning
Nonprofits are clear about what they need, and it often isn’t what funders and providers are offering.
Relationships and word of mouth drive who gets support and what support is provided. A nonprofit’s options are limited to the reach of their network.
The desire to collaborate exists across funders, nonprofits, and capacity building providers. The infrastructure to enable it is largely missing. That gap is why this network exists.
FROM OUR COLLECTION
Take these with you
RESEARCH
What Nonprofits are Saying
Why are nonprofits, especially smaller and BIPOC-led organizations, less likely to engage in capacity building? This is the question that drove ideas42's research in 2025 that resulted in findings about scarcity and constrained cognitive bandwidth.
COMPASS
Capacity Building Compass
There is no universal definition of nonprofit effectiveness. Organizations should have the freedom to define thriving on their own terms.
The compass turns that idea into a portable tool for designing capacity building around the conditions nonprofits actually operate in.
MAP
Massachusetts Capacity Building Map
A visual map of the capacity building ecosystem across Massachusetts, from community foundations to consultants to shared-services models.
FUNDER FINDINGS
What Funders Told Us
Highlights from conversations with 16 Massachusetts funders about how they approach capacity building, what gets in the way, and where they want to go next.
COMING SOON
we love nerding out about this stuff
Find us this year
Independent Sector Summit
Built to Share: Enabling Conditions to Make Shared Services Work
October 13–16, 2026
Phoenix, AZ
ARNOVA
implications and applications of research on nonprofit health and effectiveness
November 19–21, 2026
Philadelphia, PA
Feedback+ Albuquerque
We've Been Here Before: Exploring Why Partnerships Keep Stalling on Definitions
October 14–16, 202
Albuquerque, NM
GEO Conference Encore
What Makes Capacity Building Actually Work?
Date Coming Soon!
Virtual
FROM THE FIELD
Snapshots of our work
Photos by Annielly Camargo (annielly.foto@gmail.com).