When foundation officers say “we don’t fund capacity building,” I am always tempted to reply, “Is that because you don’t want your programmatic investment to pay off?”

I usually bite my tongue in those situations but I am always left wondering, would your foundation buy a house and then not replace a faulty furnace or broken hot water tank? Would they buy a new car and then never change the oil or spark plugs?

The point is that when you invest in something important you take care of it, you make sure it operates smoothly and occasionally you upgrade it. You don’t just buy it and let it fall apart.

Yet the “no capacity-building” movement among funders, and its close cousin the “no indirect cost” school of thought , somehow assume that the organization’s infrastructure can run on air while the funder’s money goes into the important stuff, the program.

How many times has a funder invested heavily in a new idea only to see it fail to produce the desired outcome? The funder usually decides the innovative idea just wasn’t the right solution and moves on.

However, I know from experience that in many of these situations, the programmatic idea never had a real chance to succeed because a weak board, poor financial management practices, lack of a clear organizational identity and purpose, or similar infrastructure weaknesses doomed the program, and the organization itself, to failure.

If the funder had invested in strengthening the organizational infrastructure, as un-sexy as that might be, the innovative program idea would’ve had a better chance for success.

As I waded through nearly a foot of water at the curb while exiting a cab at SFO, rain pouring down my collar, all I could think is “What possessed me to book a 4PM Sunday flight to Pittsburgh?” But I knew the answer. It was for a good cause, of course, the biennial meeting of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, where my colleague Heather Gowdy and I will be leading a session on our latest research initiative NonprofitNext.

GEO’s conference is my favorite gathering because it is a group of people who understand the importance of building strong, sound organizations, not just funding exciting new programs. Still, going out in this curiously wild April storm seemed a bit crazy. So I was all the more surprised when I was joined at the gate by roughly a dozen Bay Area foundation folks, all waiting for the same flight.

GEO is an important part of the nonprofit sector. I must be one of a very small number of people who have attended every one of its meetings, going back, if memory serves, to 1998. The first gathering of a few dozen people in Monterey has mushroomed into an international conference with several hundred foundation leaders and capacity builders.

Despite the dramatic loss of funding for organizational effectiveness issues over the past decade GEO has grown. It publishes important resources, including our Due Diligence Tool, and in addition to the biennial gathering, convenes smaller specialized meetings on many topics. GEO enriches the sector, even if getting to the conference requires traveling through rain, sleet, or snow, it’s always worth it.