Building social capital through nonprofit capacity building programs: The case of Omaha Community Foundation

ABSTRACT Community foundations can play an essential role in organizing, facilitating, supporting, and promoting the development of social capital among community-based nonprofit organizations. Accordingly, the Omaha Community Foundation has delivered a year-long capacity-building program for local nonprofit leaders for over eight years. A distinctive feature of this program is the cohort design that prioritizes relationship building among cohort members, while also providing technical assistance and training to program participants. A key outcome for this program has been the increase in social capital among program participants. This case study will review the evolution of this capacity-building program and how social capital building within a cohort model has been the consistent outcome since the program’s beginning. Discussion will include recommendations for how community foundations engage in building social capital in community-based nonprofit organizations.