Supercharging Your Nonprofit's Overall Capacity

Welcome to your first lessons on organizational capacity!

As you work through this 3-lesson series toward your bronze badge, we’re going to cover three main topic areas:

1. What is organizational capacity, and why does it matter?

2. What skills are related to building organizational capacity, and which do you have?

3. What does effective organizational capacity look like?

This badge is especially focused on how we build our organizations from the inside out. In fact, you probably already are an expert on WHY you do what you do, but now you’ll have the opportunity to look at all of the ways that you bring that why to life in your work: in other words HOW you do WHAT you do.

This series is also a great way to get the hang of how this learning platform works. Each lesson has a downloadable transcript for you to use, and you can always turn on the captions if that helps you learn. Also, each lesson has a quiz included and you’ll need to get a passing score to progress to the next lesson and to earn your badge.

Now, let’s dig in to start our learning about organizational capacity!

*Note that a transcript of all audio is available for download on the lessons to come, as well as an audio-only version of the lessons. You can always turn on closed-captions on the video player settings above.

In this lesson, we'll jump in on an overview of what organizational capacity is.

Be sure to download the transcript to begin building your reference library, and also feel free to use the audio-only download below for on-the-go learning.

Now that you have some basics about the topic, let's take a look at why organizational capacity matters.

Remember, you can download the transcript for this video below, and can also turn closed captions on and off for your convenience.

In this lesson, we'll look at the key skills related to building organizational capacity. Remember: skills can be learned, practiced, and developed over time, so if you feel that you have a little (or a lot of!) room for improvement, know that you're on the right track!

Be sure to download the transcript to review your learning!

In this lesson, we'll bring together our learning on why organizational capacity matters is and the skills needed to work effectively in this capacity. We'll answer the question "What does effective organizational capacity look like?" and also consider how we measure some of the key indicators of organizational capacity and its success.

Be sure to download the transcript to not only review your learning but also to see the research references used in this lesson.

Now that we know what effective organizational capacity might look like, let's take a look at how we can measure it in action.

Remember, you can download the transcript for this video below, and can also turn closed captions on and off for your convenience.

Now that we have a good idea about what organizational capacity is, why it matters, and what skills we can use to get better at it, let’s jump in on the next series of lessons that will cover how we can get better--as individuals and as organizations--at understanding and activating this important aspect of nonprofit life.

We’ll first start with looking at how what “action planning” is, and we’ll sketch out how to understand data about our own organization’s capacity. We’ll next look at what to do with that information, and how to understand three types of stakeholders that are affected by our capacity. We’ll close out our work on this series with a look at how we can set goals regarding improving our organizational capacity using a few familiar--and a few new--goal setting models.

*Note that a transcript of all audio is available for download on the lessons to come, as well as an audio-only version of the lessons. You can always turn on closed-captions on the video player settings above.

In this lesson, we'll jump get ready to do some action planning around capacity building, and look closely at how you can make (or support) a really great plan for positive change in your own nonprofit.

Be sure to download the transcript to review your learning.

Now that we have a little bit of foundation in action planning, let's think about how we can apply this to your organization.

Remember, you can download the transcript for this video below, and can also turn closed captions on and off for your convenience.

In this lesson, we'll look at what types of information can be gathered, shared, analyzed, and used to improve an organization's work in using capacity assessment information.

Be sure to download the transcript to not only review your learning but also to see the research references used in this lesson.

We've talked about action planning and information sharing, but what about reaching success? Goals are a means of knowing whether you have made the change you wanted (or missed the mark), and defining them means we will continually strive to improve.

Be sure to download the transcript to review your learning.

Goals can get us to new levels of functionality in many areas of our organization. We'll next consider how setting capacity-building goals can be successful both at the individual and team levels.

Remember, you can download the transcript for this video below, and can also turn closed captions on and off for your convenience.

In our final series of lessons on organizational capacity, we’ll put it all together to think about how you can motivate yourself and your colleagues to improve how your nonprofit operates across a range of areas. We’ll take a look at the benefits of investing your energy in organizational capacity improvement, and cover a few ways to take your first steps forward--on your own and with your teammates. We’ll also review all the ground we’ve covered in this entire unit.

You’ll round out your work on organizational capacity with an exercise that will have you develop a learning plan for yourself. Each of our learning topics conclude with this exercise. We suggest that you take some time with this to really review the content we’ve presented here, consider your responses and perspectives that you’ve given throughout this unit in the lesson surveys, and think deeply about the opportunities you have to truly support your organization in not just what it does but how it does it.

Let’s begin these final lessons.

Note that a transcript of all audio is available for download below, and you can always turn on closed-captions on the video settings above.

In this lesson, we'll look at how motivation can be supported in building capacity in your organization. Be sure to download the transcript and turn on or off closed captioning.

Motivation doesn't always have to be a serious subject: let's look now at a few ways to have fun keeping your energy up and building up the team spirit to improve capacity.

Remember, you can download the transcript for this video below, and can also turn closed captions on and off for your convenience.

In this final teaching lesson on organizational capacity in review, we're bringing together all our learning into a capstone video on how we can grow from everything we've covered thus far!

Be sure to download the transcript to not only review your learning but also to see the research references used in this lesson.