Academic and Nonprofit Partnerships Can Enhance Capacity Building
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18060/28497Keywords:
Capacity building, program evaluation, Participatory Research, PartnershipAbstract
A substantial body of research has examined the potential for collaborations between nonprofit or community-based organizations and entire universities or academic departments. However, there is considerably less research focusing on partnerships between individual faculty members and nonprofit organizations. During a semester-long research sabbatical, I collaborated with several community-based organizations on various capacity-building activities. This article draws on detailed field notes taken throughout the project to illustrate the types of capacity-building contributions academics can offer and to identify common challenges encountered in these partnerships. The findings are contextualized within the broader literature on academic-nonprofit collaborations.
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