Nonprofit Utopia just held its first class for its Capacity Building for Community Healers Program, a free offering for nonprofit leaders to build their leadership skills and grow their organizations.
“The goal is for people to learn and do, and have sufficient resources, such that every week, if you’re so inclined, you can immediately use what you have learned in your own workspace,” said Valerie Leonard, founder of Nonprofit Utopia.
The program’s first class took place Sept. 3 at Sankofa House, the location serving the cohort in North Lawndale and Garfield Park. But the program also holds classes at Friendship Baptist Church in Austin, and Teamwork Englewood in the South Side Chicago neighborhood.
Participants in the five-month cohort for the Capacity Building for Community Healers Program have taken a pretest, a leadership assessment that identifies their strengths and weaknesses, and a capacity assessment to see where their organization is at with the likes of finance, human resources, program and board development, and impact.
From these assessments, program participants will develop a plan of action to become more effective leaders over a 16-week workshop series. Training will be led by Leonard, along with Cecile DeMello, executive director at Teamwork Englewood.
The road to building capacity
Leonard — who occasionally teaches college classes and does consulting — started Nonprofit Utopia in 2018 to take a deep dive into building the capacity of nonprofit leaders on the West Side.
“It just seemed to me that this community would be a great place to put everything under one umbrella,” Leonard said.
Leonard also wanted to pass on the knowledge of how to navigate and grow the nonprofit landscape before eventually retiring, though she’s not close yet.
“I want to work until I die. I want to be used up,” said Leonard, 60. “I want to pour into people as long as I can.”
Founding her nonprofit with the goal to build capacity, Leonard launched the R3 Capacity Building and Beyond program. It was designed to help leaders develop leadership skills and organizational capacity for programs related to the three Rs — restore, reinvest and renew — those often working in violence prevention, youth or economic development, civil or legal aid, and reentry.
Nonprofit Utopia’s R3 program came after Leonard, and clients she worked with, struggled while seeking R3 funds from the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority.
“That process, I found to be overwhelming,” Leonard said of ICJIA’s grant proposal application, though she had about 30 years of nonprofit experience when she filled it out.
Though Nonprofit Utopia didn’t get the grant, Leonard vowed that wouldn’t happen again and started her own R3 capacity building program.
State Senator Lakesia Collins funded Nonprofit Utopia’s R3 program. The $300,000 came from her office, as legislators are allocated discretionary funds to give to organizations in their districts.
“I noticed that there were not a lot of organizations within my district that had access to learning how to write grants or how to access the R3 funding,” Collins said. “I wanted to make sure that the people who have boots on the ground doing this work, that they have the funds to do it.”
“It allows people whose organizations could not normally afford something like this the opportunity to go really deep into capacity building, and it’s not costing them a dime,” Leonard said of Nonprofit Utopia’s R3 program. “The state is picking up the tab.”
After Nonprofit Utopia’s R3 capacity building program ended in June, about a year-and-a-half after it started, Leonard and Collins said they both saw local leaders’ successes that they wanted to continue.
“In many instances, they doubled their knowledge of the concepts as they relate to organizational development, as it relates to developing programs,” Leonard said of the R3 program’s attendees.
About 135 students signed up for the year-long R3 capacity building course, Leonard said, and about 27 attended enough of the workshops to graduate.
Because of that success, Leonard said Collins wanted to fund another capacity building course, and gave Nonprofit Utopia another $300,000.
“As time went on, I saw how beneficial it was. I heard a lot of good feedback, and so I decided to fund it again,” Collins said. “This has definitely went to a whole other level than what we originally thought.”
The newest version of the program isn’t just for R3 sectors.
“She wanted me to focus on capacity building, but more generally,” Leonard said of Collins.
For Nonprofit Utopia’s newest Capacity Building for Community Healers Program, a majority of the 62 people who have signed up work in youth development, community development, education, or violence prevention, according to Leonard.
Graduates of the new program will leave the five-month class with a proposal concept. Leonard also said she’s going to work to get graduates of the program in front of funders who can critique their proposal pitches.
The Capacity Building For Community Healers Program also includes a one-year membership to Nonprofit Utopia, including access to courses, office hours and access to purchase discounted software for grants and case management.
“This has really put people in a stronger position,” Leonard said of the program. “Whether or not they get any additional funding, they’ll still be better off.”
Leonard said she’ll start recruiting for the second iteration of the program in November, and start the program itself in February.
Collins said she wants those participating in the latest version of the program become more independent.
“I’m just hoping that they continue to build off of this,” Collins said of Nonprofit Utopia’s program, “but also other areas that organizations might struggle with and need some more training around or can get some more skills around it.”
