National Council of Nonprofit Associations

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The Nonprofit Capacity Building Program - championed by the National Council of Nonprofits and incorporated into the Serve America Act (HR 1388) by the Baucus-Grassley Amendment - was signed into law by President Obama on April 21, 2009. It will be administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service, a quasi-federal agency. The Program authorizes federal grants of not less than $200,000 to intermediary nonprofit organizations who raise an equal matching grant from private sources. The grants will cover the cost of organizational development assistance to small and midsize nonprofit organizations.  Key elements include:

• Competitive grants shall be made in each state to the extent practicable. Because the authorization is $5 million for 5 years, there could only be up to 25 grants a year.
• Intermediary nonprofit organizations include public charities, foundations and public entities. An intermediary is defined as "an experienced and capable nonprofit entity with meaningful prior experience in providing organizational development assistance, or capacity building assistance, focused on small and midsize nonprofit orgnaizations."
• A "preference" is to be given to grantees in areas where nonprofits face significant resource hardship challenges.
• Considerations in selecting grantees include: the number of small and midsize nonprofits to be served by the grant; how cost efficient the grant is relative to the number of nonprofits in the state; and the quality of the organizational development assistance to be provided.
• The grant will be the 50% federal share of the assistance and the intermediary must provide a non-federal share that matches this through contributions from third parties, such as foundations, corporations, individual donors and other public funds available from regional, state or local government agencies.

Learn more about the program and read Senator Baucus' floor speech in the Congressional Record or Senator Grassley's summary, with our State Association sign-on list included.

UPDATE (07/31/09): The President's proposed budget - prepared before the Serve America Act was passed - did not include funding for many programs at levels authorized by the Serve America Act and attempts to specifically remove the express reservation of funds language for the Nonprofit Capacity Building Program.

After a significant slash in the Administration's request for the Serve America Act appropriation on the House side (HR 3293), the Senate Appropriations Committee acted this week (7/27/09) to maintain that request and add more to grow the number of AmeriCorps volunteers and to launch new programs. Get more details about the Senate Appropriations Committee efforts to fund Serve America Act programs, including the Nonprofit Capacity Building Program, in our July Policy News.

Read more about efforts to fully fund the Program in our May and June Policy News.