Capacity Building 3.0: Building Sustainable Learning Communities for Effective Public Health Delivery

Funders of public health organizations are striving to be more effective as the number of foundations, public and regulatory scrutiny, and demands for accountability have increased. As a growing number of grantmakers seek higher performance for nonprofits, many also realize they could do a better job “practicing what they preach,” especially in regards to planning, leadership, governance, staff development, and evaluation.

Health funders need to better understand how to build the capacity of their grantees and their own organizational capacity. Any solution to public health challenges entails cross-sector and collaborative community engagement. The recent establishment of Capacity Building Learning Communities has been one means of ensuring that a more effective delivery of health services in the U.S. Public health organizations has increased their effectiveness, as they have strengthened their ability to work alongside others equally as interested in raising ALL boats on their local health ecosystem waters.

This panel discussion will familiarize participants with several place-based initiatives, in which health funders dedicated to the highest quality provision of services have invested in the ability of local public health organizations to effectively increase their organizational capacity. This has occurred through the funders’ willingness to frontload their investment in their grantees; by working collaboratively to identify the exact nature of the organizational capacities the nonprofits need to most urgently build, clusters of learners are supported to work collectively to implement a multi-year sector-strengthening initiative through which all community residents benefit. Funder and grantee perspectives will be shared in this discussion.

Speakers

• Julie Simpson, TCC Group (moderator)
• Becky Pastner, St. David’s Foundation
• Rebecca Brune, Methodist Healthcare Ministries
• Ronda Rutledge, Sustainable Food Center

Host

American Public Health Association Annual Conference