NONPROFIT CAPACITY BUILDING AND FUNDRAISING

SDS seeks to empower nonprofits serving low-income communities to be more innovative, effective, and sustainable agents of social change.  Building, sustaining, and growing a nonprofit organization in today's competitive and resource-constrained marketplace is an increasingly difficult endeavor.  Operationally, we help our clients incorporate business operations strategies that improve their effectiveness and efficiency.  Financially, we seek to help our clients become self-sustaining by strategically identifying and pursuing grants and developing ongoing revenue sources.   In the past three years, SDS has secured more than $15 million in grants on behalf of our nonprofit clients. (See a sample client list.)

Core Nonprofit Capacity Building Services:
Fundraising	Research
Organizational Planning	Project Coordination/Management
Assessment/Evaluation Services	Partnership Development
Communications/Outreach	Capacity Building Trainings

Nonprofits increasingly face financial challenges as a result of funding cuts, increased competition for limited funding sources, and constrained organizational resources.  We enable our clients to secure needed funding, diversify their funding base, and secure long-term sustainability. In the past three years, SDS has secured more than $15 million in grants on behalf of our nonprofit clients.
Our core Fundraising Services include:

• Public-sector, private-sector, and foundation funding identification
• Grant writing/application preparation
• Capital campaign coordination
• Short and long-term sustainability planning
• Market-based funding strategies

In today's climate of limited resources, most nonprofits are challenged to dedicate internal resources to matters of organizational planning.  SDS takes a business approach in assisting its clients to develop strategies to more effectively run and grow their organizations.

Our core Organizational Planning Services include:

• Business planning
• Strategic planning
• Sustainability planning
• Board development
• Program development and implementation

In order for nonprofits to fully understand the impacts and the effectiveness of their inner-workings, SDS provides critical assessment and evaluation services.  SDS brings proven expertise to develop, design, and implement assessment projects needed to document and assess key organizational and programmatic impacts. 

Our core Assessment and Evaluation Services include:

• Community needs assessment
• Organization and program evaluations
• Culturally appropriate assessment tool development
• Evaluation implementation and coordination
• Data collection, management, and analysis

With the rapid proliferation of communication venues and multiple stakeholder groups, there is a growing need for more specific and targeted communications. It is more important than ever to successfully convey organizational information in a purposeful and deliberate manner. SDS is able to effectively communicate your organization's message using multiple media to address targeted core stakeholder priorities.

Our core Communications and Outreach Services include:

• Professional organizational documents that effectively articulate programs and goals to a variety of stakeholder groups—clients, funders, media, community, etc. (coordinate with graphics experts)
• Stakeholder presentation development and training
• Website development (coordinate with website developers)

While nonprofits excel at providing crucial community services and resources, many may not be equipped with research capabilities to tap into the wealth of information needed to strategically guide their organization. By leveraging SDS' expertise to collect, analyze, and synthesize large amounts of information into concise reports, your organization will be poised and educated to make strategic decisions regarding your service sector, community, and constituency needs.

Our core Research Services include:

• Community Assessment Reports (needs and demographic reports)
• Industry or nonprofit service “Best Practices” reports
• Industry community or service-sector research
• Topic-specific research

Whether facing complex fundraising initiatives or carrying out work related to multi-entity collaborations, SDS draws upon its organizational skills and resources to develop and implement your key organizational and programmatic efforts.

Our core Project Management Services include:

• Organization or program-related project management
• Multi-organizational initiative coordination
• Capital campaign coordination

As the nonprofit world is pushed to engage in more program-related partnerships and collaborative efforts, it is more important than ever to have access and relationships with key stakeholders, service providers, community leaders, and government officials. SDS helps organizations by identifying, brokering access to, and nurturing key relationships that you can leverage towards achieving your goals.

Our core Partnership Development Services include:

• Key stakeholder identification
• Develop & implement partnership strategy by leveraging SDS' extensive relationships with funders, businesses, and community leaders
• Multi-nonprofit collaboration coordination

Building an organization's capacity is an on-going and time-intensive endeavor, but one essential to achieve sustainability and self-sufficiency.  SDS creates and implements trainings tailored to your specific needs in order to build and enhance the capacity of your services, staffing, and organization.

Our core Capacity Building Trainings include:

• Funding identification tutorials
• Grant writing skills classes
• Direct service trainings
• Development of strategic organizational documents
• Outreach presentation training