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.

I recently had the honor of giving a keynote address, at the annual meeting of the Donors Forum, about our report Convergence: How Five Trends Will Reshape the Social Sector. It was especially meaningful for me to return to the Donors Forum, because they first invited me to speak to their members over ten years ago,  about our monograph Beyond Collaboration, back when I founded La Piana Consulting in 1998.

As Valerie Lies, President and CEO of the Donors Forum, described in her powerful opening remarks to the 600 guests of last week’s event, Chicago is struggling with many of the same economic and political challenges as the rest of the country.

I described La Piana Consulting’s NonprofitNext research and the five key trends that are converging to reshape the social sector landscape.

Joining the discussion was Mae Hong, Director of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Nicole Robinson, Director of Kraft Foods Global Community Involvement division, and Ricardo Estrada, Chicago’s First Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Family and Support Services.

The panel itself represented the future, with young and diverse leaders, whose affiliations spanned a blurring of sectors across government, philanthropic, and corporate social action.

Where will you take nonprofits next? Join the conversation today!