Capacity Building

One of MACC's goals is to help build the capacity of its member organizations.  We are doing this by:

 

Affinity Groups

Youth Evaluation Team

This team grew out of a former MACC Affinity team. This group's mission is to create a survey tool, based on the Five C's of Youth Development, that measures the outcomes of youth who participate in MACC youth programs. Results from this evaluation tool will do a number of things.  First, it will help us to better understand the youth who participate in services.  As well, it will identify similarities, differences, and areas of expertise by agency.  These findings will then be shared amongst the Alliance to strengthen the youth programs that are provided throughout the Alliance. 

Volunteerism Affinity Group

The Volunteerism Affinity Group is in the beginning stages of building a unique collaboration.  This group will combine their individual resources to combine volunteer trainings, combine knowledge on volunteer best-practices, and how to recruit and integrate volunteers into the nonprofit to build capacity.

Food Shelf/Basic Needs Task Force

With the expertise of Bina Nikrin, MACC Alliance food shelf coordinators and directors came together for three meetings to share their experience and concerns about current basic needs systems and issues.  Similar to the volunteer group, many participants found extreme value in sharing best practices to improve their individual food shelf. 

After the first meeting, members of this task force realized that while all of their organizations tracked data for funding purposes, they did not have access to the aggregated data for regional comparison purposes. With the expertise of Bina Nikrin, a Principal Planning Analyst from Hennepin County, our members aggregated their food shelf data and analyzed current trends, similarities and differences amongst their organizations to better inform their practice. 

 

Leadership Trainings

Another benefit of membership is the leadership trainings that are brought together by MACC staff.  In the past, trainings have focused around topics such as improving project management.  Future trainings may center on topics such as: developing leadership management, volunteer management, etc.

More importantly, as an alliance, we are interested in obtaining feedback from our members to inform us of what professional development trainings are created.  The more input we get, the better we are able to tailor these unique opportunities to our members!

 

Public Allies

Public Allies is a national movement grounded in the conviction that everyone leads.  With the mission to advance new leadership to strengthen communities, nonprofits and civic participation, participants of the signature AmeriCorps Public Ally program work in nonprofits in their communities for 10 months while participating in weekly leadership development trainings.  For more information about Public Allies, visit www.publicallies.org

This year's Public Ally hosted at the MACC Alliance is Liz Backstrom.  As a returning AmeriCorps member, Liz will be assisting with projects to help build the capacity of the MACC Alliance.