About
What is the Nonprofit Builder?
Nonprofit Builder is a capacity building platform for nonprofits. It brings together nonprofits, the foundations that fund them, and the experts/consultants who provide capacity building services.
Our scope is global, with a focus on underserved geographies outside of the United States. Our main clients are foundations with international programs, who are looking to provide capacity building support to their grantees overseas.
Rather than working with a limited set of “in-house” consultants, the Nonprofit Builder works with a diverse pool of high quality consultants invited and trusted by the participating foundations, leveraging the “collective intelligence” of the community.
The advantages of our approach
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Nonprofits can access a large variety of proven and highly-motivated experts, often with first-hand experience of their local context.
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Foundations are free to work with their existing consultants but can also work with consultants sourced by other foundations, filling gaps in their pool.
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Consultants who have a strong reputation within one foundation’s ecosystem can get interesting work with other foundation ecosystems.
Current and future services
Our consultant directory allows participating foundations to pool their trusted consultants in a common directory for the benefit for their grantees. Each foundation can build a custom selection from this common pool to suit its programmatic and geographic interests.
Our Ask the Experts service makes it easy and affordable for nonprofits to access support, while relieving their foundations of the administrative burden of issuing numerous small capacity building grants.
We are also working on country pages, bringing together those international and local consultants with experience of a particular country where a foundation has numerous grantees. We are working on pages for Ethiopia, Brazil, and India.
We provide our members a resource library, as well as an online leadership 360 and organizational assessment tools. We will be building a knowledge base of best practices in the future.
We are also starting to offer executive education to nonprofit leaders, leveraging the knowledge of our consultants and experts. These courses will be online only. Our webinar series is a first step in this direction.
Why are we doing this? Our goal and vision
The Nonprofit Builder’s long-term goal is to develop, making it simple, efficient, affordable, continuous and collaborative.
We envision a nonprofit sector where
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Nonprofits access high quality capacity building services at a price they are very happy to pay.
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More and more foundations, large and small, offer capacity building services to their grantees.
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Organizational development consultants who serve nonprofits can easily find rewarding work.
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The impact of capacity building work is evidenced, and lessons are documented and available to all.
Current Member Foundations
The Nonprofit Builder’s long-term goal is to develop, making it simple, efficient, affordable, continuous and collaborative.
The Nonprofit Builder is used by
Benefits
for nonprofits
Access our network of high-quality capacity-building consultants, who are tested and recommended by leading foundations.
Services like Ask the Experts allow you to consult our experts for up to 10 hours completely free of charge (the cost is paid by your foundation via Nonprofit Builder).
Use tools like the Organization Mapping Tool or Nonprofit Leader 360 to determine and prioritize your development goals.
for foundations
Fill in gaps in your pool of organizational effectiveness consultants with trustworthy service providers tested and vetted by the other participating foundations.
We make it easier for grantees to get on the path of capacity building: to figure out their needs and priorities, find the best consultants and resources.
Our turnkey services, like Ask the Expert, remove the administrative burden of managing small capacity building grants while providing with control and information on impact.
for consultants
Participating consultants can convert the trust and success they have earned with one foundation into work with other foundations and nonprofits.
We help capacity building consultants find more and better work with leading nonprofits who are committed to making progress.
We help consultants connect them with like-minded peers so they can collaborate on projects and learn from each other.
.How to join?
Three membership plans
Choose the right price for you, whoever you are
Small Nonprofit
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Access to the consultant database
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Support to identify the right consultants
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Invitations to all learning events, panels and webinars
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Use of the resource library and online assessment tools
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User accounts for 5 staff members
Large Organization
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Access to the consultant database
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Support to identify the right consultants
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Invite your consultants to join
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Invitations to all learning events, panels and webinars
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Use of the resource library and online assessment tools
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User accounts for 25 staff members
Small Foundation or Funder
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Access to the consultant database
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Custom consultant pool: only include those who are relevant to you
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Invite your consultants to join
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Support to identify the right consultants
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Invitations to all learning events, panels and webinars for all staff and grantees
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Use of the resource library and online assessment tools
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Private document library for your internal manuals and policies
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Access to the Ask and Expert service for your grantees
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User accounts for 25 staff members
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User accounts for 100 grantees or partners
Large Foundation or Funder
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Access to the consultant database
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Custom consultant pool: only include those who are relevant to you
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Invite your consultants to join
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Support to identify the right consultants
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Invitations to all learning events, panels and webinars for all staff and grantees
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Use of the resource library and online assessment tools
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Private document library for your internal manuals and policies
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Access to the Ask and Expert service for your grantees
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Single Sign On
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User accounts for unlimited staff members
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User accounts for unlimited grantees or partners
Free for foundation grantees!
Membership for Consultants
Consultants play a very important role in the Nonprofit Builder. Membership for consultants is free of charge, on an invitation basis. If you wish to join, you need to be invited by Laudes Foundation, Oak Foundation, Packard Foundation, or recommended by one of their grantees. If this is not your case, you may apply and we will ask you for three recent references. Please use this form to reach out and ask for more details.
Who developed the Nonprofit Builder and Why?
It was developed by Daniel D’Esposito, essentially as a solution to the challenges he faced as executive director of a nonprofit:
But generally speaking, I had a hard time realising what support was available, as I depended mostly on word-of-mouth from my limited network. Another headache was figuring out how to pay for it: in typical nonprofit thriftiness, we deprived ourselves of valuable external support because we found it too costly.
These are the problems I am trying to solve with the Nonprofit Builder, so that nonprofits have access to very high quality support systems, and also the financing to pay for them.”
Acknowledgements
We also acknowledge the support and contribution of the following persons:
Provided generous guidance and encouragement on an ongoing basis since the project’s inception in 2017: Anna Kondratyuk, Chris Duckett, Gisella Reina, Olivier Schaller, Adriana Craciun, Michel de Geoffroy.
Provided crucial insights and support at specific moments in the project: Katherine Mulhern, Michael Römig, David Keast, Daniel Storm, Maryna Soula, Mafalda dos Santos, Jannick B. Pedersen, Geraldine Kilbride, Janet Sernack, Jörn Erbguth.
Dino Hajric for the ongoing web development and Vlado Lepusina for the wonderful graphic design.
