Community Capacity Building | Ontario Healthy Communities Coalition. Community capacity building refers to the identification, strengthening and linking of your community's tangible resources, such as local service groups, and intangible resources like community spirit. Your community's definition of capacity will change as the community grows but it is basically the infrastructure of individual skills and knowledge networks, organizations, businesses that a healthy community is built upon. Community capacity will allow you to get done what needs to get done. For example: Chatham-Kent Community Capacity Builders Forum The Chatham-Kent Community Capacity Builder's Forum was established in the spring of 1999, bringing together business, labour, service clubs, community groups, volunteers and various government departments that meet informally on Saturday mornings every second month.
Their goals are to break down barriers to working together, discover their strengths and how best to share community resources. Community capacity and social capital: Aspen Institute. Community Tool Box. Asset-Based Community Development Institute :: Asset-Based Community Development Institute :: Northwestern University. Ontario Trillium Foundation. Capacity building is a key element in the Foundation's theory of change: when organizations develop the appropriate capacities, they are better able to deliver on their mission and therefore build healthy and vibrant communities. By increasing the long-term capacity of grantee organizations, the OTF can achieve its mission of building healthy and vibrant communities. The Ontario Trillium Foundation has a profound impact on the capacity of the sector across the province through its granting and convening activities.
OTF allocates more than $100 million annually to the nonprofit sector in Ontario. We undertook two research projects related to capacity building. As a result of the Building Capacity, Granting for Impact Research Report (pdf), we found more about how capacity building could increase the impact of grants to individual organization and strengthen the overall capacity of the sector.