Case Study
How Are We Doing?
Capacity Building Program Review
What’s this report about?
Jeslyn Nees, Marvin Kalumbe and Dylan McCallum, three Boise State University MPA Students, tackled a HUGE project for us. They took 5 years' worth of data (because we tend to evaluate and measure everything) and analyzed it to help us understand whether or not what we do works. And this case study is a summary of that extensive report!
The report evaluates the nonprofit capacity-building model used by Idaho Partners for Good (IP4G) through a qualitative cross-case analysis of the capacity-building model with Life’s Kitchen, Boise Bicycle Project, and Jesse Tree Idaho. The project examined how IP4G’s relationship-based support model might effectively strengthen nonprofit organizational capacity and identified design improvements to support future scaling and sustainability.
What did the analysis find?
The analysis found that IP4G’s model was most effective in strengthening internal organizational infrastructure.
Across all three organizations, improvements were seen in governance systems, leadership clarity, documentation practices, strategic planning, operational workflows, accountability structures, and decision-making processes. These changes increased organizational resilience and sustainability by helping nonprofits move from “people-dependent” systems toward more stable “system-dependent” operations.
A major finding was that organizational readiness strongly influenced implementation pace and progress.
Factors such as leadership stability, staffing capacity, board engagement, and existing infrastructure shaped how organizations were able to absorb and sustain improvement. Higher-readiness organizations advanced more quickly into strategic refinement work, while lower-readiness organizations first needed foundational operational stabilization. Despite these differences, all participating organizations demonstrated meaningful progress, highlighting the flexibility and transferability of the IP4G model across varied nonprofit contexts.
The study also emphasized that capacity-building efforts competed for time and attention with daily operational demands. Nonprofits frequently balanced organizational development work alongside service delivery, fundraising, staffing pressures, and community responsibilities.
As a result, implementation was iterative and often slower than anticipated. Strong outcomes were most likely when support was relationship-based, adaptive, and reinforced over time through accountability and trust between IP4G and the nonprofits they served.
Sustainability emerged as a central theme. The strongest long-term results occurred when new systems, workflows, governance practices, and evaluation routines became integrated into everyday operations rather than remaining one-time deliverables. The report stresses the importance of distinguishing between “system creation” and “system integration,” arguing that durable change requires repetition, reinforcement, and organizational ownership over time.
What’s the conclusion?
The report concludes that IP4G’s model demonstrates strong proof of concept as an adaptable and relationship-centered approach to nonprofit capacity-building.
Recommendations for improvement include:
implementing readiness assessments upfront,
developing tiered engagement pathways for a nonprofit to select based on their day-to-day requirements,
increasing direct board involvement,
prioritizing operational needs early in engagements,
formalizing follow-up and exit planning,
expanding practical evaluation support,
preserving strong consultant-to-organization matching practices.