Building Non-Profit Capacity and Community Partnerships: Findings from the Communities Empowering Youth (CEY) Evaluation, 2006-2010 [United States]

In 2006, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the United States Department of Health and Human Services established the Communities Empowering Youth (CEY) program. CEY's intent was to address the capacity building needs of partnerships of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) that were tackling issues of gang violence, youth violence, or child abuse and neglect. CEY projects consisted of a partnership between a lead organization/institution (the grantee) and at least two other partnering NPOs that provided services to youth within a specific geographical area. In 2006 ACF, through the Office of Community Services (OCS), awarded 3-year grants to 100 CEY partnerships; in 2007 ACF funded 31 additional partnerships. Abt Associates conducted the evaluation of the CEY program for ACF. This evaluation included annual surveys of the organizations receiving CEY funding over the program's three-year grant cycle. The survey measured changes in two types of capacity: (1) organizational capacity of each lead organization and their partner organizations, and (2) partnership capacity. The federal CEY evaluation is a descriptive, longitudinal outcome study of changes in organizational capacity and partnership development among the CEY lead organizations and their partners over their three-year grant cycles. The evaluation focused on a representative sample of 50 (of 100) lead organizations from the 2006 grant year cohort and all 31 lead organizations from the 2007 grant year cohort. The entire population of partners associated with each lead organization in the study is also included. Thus, the evaluation sample is generalizable to all 131 CEY grants and over 800 associated partner organizations. As noted above, the evaluation examined two general types of capacity: organizational capacity of both the lead organization and each partner organization, and partnership capacity. Organizational capacity included the four capacity domains specified in the CEY grant announcement: (1) leadership development, (2) organizational development, (3) program development, and (4) community engagement. Partnership capacity includes the areas of goal setting and action planning, communication, leadership, and sustainability for each CEY partnership.