The Organizational Effectiveness (OE) team is often asked where nonprofits can find resources for capacity building projects. Grant funding in this area can be hard to find, and unfortunately, we are not able to provide support for all of the worthy projects that come our way, even for Packard Foundation grantees. In some circumstances, it…

Over the past several years, our sector has been debating the design, relevancy and role of strategic planning as a core capacity building tool. Some say it is too time intensive and the final product too often ends up “sitting on a shelf.” Others deem planning to be a distraction from critical daily, operational and…

Kicking off a series of posts on strategic planning and how it continues to evolve, below is a blog post that I wrote a few years ago while I was a capacity building consultant. This post focuses on the difference between strategic planning and business planning. It is meant to provide some guidelines and understanding…

From 2009-2016, the Packard Foundation engaged in an intensive effort to improve summer learning in California. Over seven years, we helped to support 12 high-quality demonstration programs with multiple sites, assemble a network of technical assistance providers for summer programs, and advocate for increased support for summer learning at the state and local levels Highlights…

Early in my career I taught a series of classes for UNIX system administrators, including a course in computer security. I guided people through password management, taught them about viruses and worms and showed them how to set-up a firewall. This was back in the days of the “world-wide-web” when the underground world of hackers…