Great Nonprofits

Fair Chance’s Capacity Building Partnership with BT strengthened the organization in the areas of fiscal management, fundraising, communications, board development and human resources. During the Fair Chance partnership, BT more than doubled its budget and tripled the number of participants served.

As a new transplant to the DC region I needed to establish a network. I reached out to many leaders in the nonprofit community and I was impressed with how and what they said about Fair Chance. I wanted to align myself with Fair Chance because it was an organization that spoke to my values to strengthen nonprofits as they pursue excellence in meeting their mission. The beneficiaries of their services were not only the nonprofit organizations they partnered with to support but most importantly the youth that those organization's served. As a volunteer with Fair Chance, I invest my time because I believe in the far-reaching value and impact of capacity building. The Fair Chance staff is passionate and committed to supporting their nonprofit partners to achieve mission success. That's something we should all value. Building stronger nonprofits = Building stronger communities.

Fair Chance fills a much needed gap in educating small non-profits in neighborhoods on how to more effectively operate their organizations. They've done a terrific job with identifying appropriate organizations and providing them with important organizational expertise.

As a Fair Chance board member for over a year, I have been honored to serve with such a hands-on, motivated board and dedicated, resilient staff. In the past several months, I have spent significant amounts of time interviewing the executive directors of the nonprofits with which Fair Chance has partnered. What has impressed me most is the truly transformative effect our capacity building has on these dynamic, community-based nonprofits serving youth, children and their families in Wards 5-8 of Washington, DC. To a person, these executive directors have discussed how Fair Chance has helped to stabilize, strengthen, and sustain their organizations in areas like board development, fundraising, financial management, human resources and succession planning. It is obvious to me that there exists a direct correlation between having a stable, sustainable community-based nonprofit and the positive outcomes these nonprofits can achieve. Moreover, Fair Chance has truly developed the leadership skills of these executive directors, who now feel more effective in their roles as leaders of their organizations. One executive director gave me the following apt analogy of the relationship between her organization and Fair Chance: her organization is the mission, the heart, and Fair Chance is the structure, the skeleton that protects and nutures that heart to ensure that it can do great works in the community. That's a great way to think of what Fair Chance does at its best.

Fair Chance is intensely focused on understanding and addressing the needs of underserved children in Washington. They have an innovative, effective approach to building the capacity of nonprofits and strengthening the community one organization at a time.

Fair Chance was a godsend to our young nonprofit organization. Due to our work with Fair Chance, we were able to improve our marketing and communications, fundraising, finance, and Board development systems. In addition, potential funders noted our partnership with Fair Chance as a sign that we were on the right track as a developing nonprofit and that we had the support we would need to continue our growth. We have been able to take advantage of the Fair Chance community of nonprofit partners and philanthropic supporters to strengthen our organizational infrastructure and capacity with speed and quality that could not have been possible without Fair Chance's support.