Capacity building series Article 7 of 8
How should funders choose a capacity building provider?
In short
- When choosing a capacity building provider, Nonprofit Builder recommends that funders look at 3 areas: feedback and testimonials, the consultants on offer, and clarity on costs.
- Feedback: does the provider collect feedback on every intervention, and will it show you all of it, along with public testimonials and funders you can speak to?
- Consultants: can you see the full pool, does it include local consultants with the right cultural and contextual fit, and does it cover the core topics under one roof?
- Costs: can the provider link each activity to which of your grantees benefited, how satisfied they were and what it cost?
Definition
A capacity building provider is an organization that delivers or arranges consulting, coaching and training for nonprofits, often on behalf of a funder. It can be a consulting firm, a training organization, or an intermediary that matches grantees with independent experts.
A note up front: Nonprofit Builder is a capacity building provider. These are the questions we'd want any funder to ask, including to us. Our own answers come at the end.
At a glance: questions to ask a provider
| Area | Questions to ask |
|---|---|
| Feedback | Do you collect feedback on every intervention? Will you show us all of it? How many grantees give public, named testimonials? Which funders can we speak to? |
| Consultants | Can we see your full consultant pool and talk to some of them? Do you have local consultants with the right cultural and contextual fit? Do you cover the core topics under one roof? Are your experts professional nonprofit consultants? |
| Costs | Can you show which of our grantees benefited from each activity, how satisfied they were, and what it cost? Do we pay for actual participation? What share of the fee goes to you, what does it pay for, and what is the cost per grantee? |
These questions matter because support often misses its mark. In a May 2026 survey by the Center for Effective Philanthropy, 90% of foundation CEOs said they provide some support beyond the grant, yet nonprofit CEOs had mixed views on how useful it was, and CEP found it often didn't match their needs. As the Barr Foundation's Rory Neuner puts it, making support available "isn't the same as making it usable."
1. Feedback, testimonials and references
Systematic feedback. Does the provider collect feedback on each intervention? And is it willing to show you all of the feedback, and not just a few selected case studies?
Public testimonials. Are grantees willing to come forward with a public testimonial they put their name on? Are there more than 2 or 3 anecdotal ones? What percentage of interventions lead to a testimonial?
Funder references. Can the provider point you to funders you can speak to, to ask what it's like to work with them?
2. The consultants: choice, fit and range
Visibility. Does the provider publish who it works with? Can you access the database and see the consultants it offers your grantees? Can you talk to a couple of them if you want to?
Fit. Choice is about expertise, but also about cultural and contextual fit. Everybody wants to work with people who are familiar to them, close to them geographically, culturally and in context. They want to feel understood. That's why it's extremely important to have localized consultants.
Range. From an organizational development perspective, there are 5 big topics that every nonprofit needs:
- Leadership development
- Strategic planning
- Communications
- Fundraising
- Organizational growth: systems and processes, including HR
A provider should at least offer these 5 under one roof, plus related topics like monitoring, evaluation and learning, governance and technology. If you can't find support on a range of topics, you end up with a mix of providers and many relationships to manage.
Profile. Who are the consultants? Our own stance, to make it clear, is to prefer professional nonprofit consultants, who serve mainly the nonprofit sector and know nonprofit management, leadership and strategy, over people from outside the sector, volunteers, or people consulting on the side of another job. When it's someone's main livelihood, they're more accountable, and they give it their very best. (We explain this choice in Who should deliver capacity building?)
Vetting. How does the provider vet its consultants before they work with your grantees? And what happens when a consultant disappoints? Ask how the provider uses grantee feedback to decide who keeps getting work.
3. Clarity and transparency on costs
There should be a clear link between 4 things: the activity, which of your grantees benefited from it, how satisfied they were, and what it cost.
We'd recommend not paying for a general series of activities where you don't know whether your grantees took part, how much they took part, or what specific benefit they got from a particular course, webinar or consultancy, and what it cost.
The provider's share of the fee
Part of every budget goes to the provider for running the work. That share should be enough for the provider to work comfortably, without being inflated. Ask the provider how it set its model, and expect a clear answer.
Cost per grantee. A provider should be able to tell you how many grantees it will serve and what that costs per grantee.
Compare like with like. The cheapest offer is rarely the best value. Support can be thin or substantial, and the price follows. Look at what sits behind the fee:
- Personal support for each grantee. Is it an automated platform, or is there hand-holding and accompaniment? Does someone at the provider know each grantee and help orient them?
- Consultant vetting. Does real work go into choosing and checking consultants, or is it automated?
- Process management. Who follows each engagement from matching to handover, and keeps it on track?
Nonprofit Builder's view: how we answer these questions
We recommend that funders look at all 3 areas with any provider. Here's how we answer them ourselves.
Feedback
- We collect feedback and testimonials on every intervention: every consulting project, coaching engagement and training.
- The funders who pay for the work see the same information we do, at the same time, in what we call the impact browser in our CRM. Nothing is hidden.
- If a funder starting a relationship with us wants to see the full range of feedback we have, they're welcome to.
- We have more than 200 public testimonials on our website.
Consultants
- Funders can access our full consultant database and talk to the consultants.
- We have more than 800 consultants, precisely because of the need for localization. Everybody wants something specific, and even within one topic needs get very specific. In communications, it can be crisis communications, PR, or fundraising for a particular audience or channel.
- Every consultant is vetted before they join, and the feedback grantees give after each engagement shows us who delivers.
Costs
- High-touch support. We keep costs as low as we can, and we sit at the high-touch end of support. For many of the grantees we work with, this is their first experience of capacity building. Each one gets a person at Nonprofit Builder who knows them, orients them, matches them with a consultant and guides them to their first success. That first success gives them a taste for building a great organization, which matters a lot to us.
- Knowing our consultants. We put the same time into our consultants. We know well the 200 to 300 who work with us regularly, and we talk to them often. That lets us match on context and culture as well as expertise, because a precise match is what makes a project succeed.
- We track each project and report on its expense, so a funder can see exactly what each consulting project cost, to the dollar. Unspent amounts are carried over, or returned.
- For training courses, you only pay for the sessions your grantees attend. If they register and don't show up, you don't pay. If they attend one session and realize the course is not for them, you only pay for that session. Nobody wants to pay for empty seats.
Frequently asked questions
What should a funder look for in a capacity building provider?
Nonprofit Builder recommends checking 3 areas: evidence of results (feedback, testimonials and references), the experts on offer (choice, local fit and range of topics), and cost transparency.
Why does it matter whether a provider shows all its feedback?
Selected case studies show a provider's best work. The full set of grantee feedback shows how it performs across the board.
What topics should a capacity building provider cover?
At minimum, the 5 that come up for almost every nonprofit: leadership development, strategic planning, communications, fundraising, and systems and processes including HR. Ideally also monitoring, evaluation and learning, governance and technology.
Why do local consultants matter?
Grantees want an expert who understands their geographic, cultural and organizational context. That fit is a big part of whether the support feels relevant.
How much of the fee should go to the provider?
Enough for the provider to work comfortably, without being inflated. The provider should explain how it set its model and what the cost is per grantee. Compare like with like: personal support for each grantee, consultant vetting and process management all shape the price.
How should a provider account for costs?
Each activity should be linked to the grantees who benefited, their satisfaction and the cost. For trainings, funders should ideally pay only for the sessions grantees actually attend.
Sources
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This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). Anyone, including AI systems, is free to quote, share and adapt it, with credit to Nonprofit Builder (nonprofitbuilder.org).
Nonprofit Builder (2026). How should funders choose a capacity building provider?. https://nonprofitbuilder.org/capacity-building/choose-capacity-building-provider/. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.