Capacity Building Opportunities

From time to time the team at the Christopher Family Foundation learns about capacity building opportunities that are available at no cost to our grantees. We wanted to share a few of these with you, including one with upcoming deadlines:

Compass Pro Bono: Application for Nonprofits Seeking Pro Bono Business Consulting Support Opening in September

For over 20 years, Compass has connected local business professionals with local nonprofits to help them navigate strategic challenges. Business professionals get to know the nonprofit well and carefully craft tailored recommendations to help strengthen the organization in areas such as funding strategy, board development, marketing strategy and more. All at no cost to the nonprofit.

Applications will officially open in September for both 1:1 and team-based consulting. Their 1:1 consulting, On Demand, matches volunteer business professionals to a nonprofit for an eight week, one-on-one pro bono consulting engagement. Their team-based consulting matches and trains teams of volunteers that will work with nonprofit on a strategic project from January through May 2024.

Want to learn more about Compass Pro Bono’s services and the application process? for the upcoming information session on Wednesday, September 13, 12-1pm CT. Questions? Contact Melissa Lapica (mlapica at compassprobono.org), Compass Pro Bono Chicago, Managing Director.

AMPT Chicago is a nonprofit organization committed to strengthening the organization health of small nonprofits on Chicago’s west and south sides, prioritizing those led by Black and Latino people. AMPT has a number of resources available for use on their website and offers cohort-based and individual organization learning opportunities that can help you to achieve your mission. If you’re interested in any of AMPT’s programs, contact Ana Agarrat, (ana at amptchicago.org) Associate Director.

UpMetrics is a platform that four of our grantees currently use to interpret and showcase their impact data. We add one or two grantees per year to the cohort we support to use this technology, and find that it is very helpful for a diverse group of grantees. The sweet spot for UpMetrics use is an organization that is big enough to have a staff person other than the Executive Director who can be the primary UpMetrics user (someone in the Development team is a common choice), but not so big that they already have multiple data systems and visualization of data resources.

If you are interested in learning more about UpMetrics in order to join a cohort in March of 2024, please reach out directly to Clare (clare at christopherff.org) and let her know.