The John Rex Endowment is pleased to renew the Capacity Building Initiative Request for Proposals (RFP). Three types of support are available through the Capacity Building Initiative (CBI). Organizational Assessment grants allow organizations to undergo an assessment of current capacities. Capacity Building grants provide funding for organizations to implement strategies identified through an assessment process for the purpose of increasing their effectiveness and sustainability. In 2011 the John Rex Endowment has designated a third type of support for Strategic Restructuring assessment/planning grants. These grants will support two or more organizations assessing the feasibility of and implementation needs for alliances or integrations, such as consolidated administrative functions, shared staff positions, or mergers.

This RFP includes significant changes to our organizational assessment funding as a result of our learnings from a comprehensive evaluation of the CBI that was completed at the end of 2010. Revised guidelines for comprehensive organizational assessments provide more structure to both the assessment process and to the report of findings and recommendations provided by the consultant to the grantee. Given the additional requirements, we have increased the possible award amount for organizational assessment grants. We will be offering optional information sessions to capacity building consultants to discuss these changes and other relevant learnings from the completed CBI evaluation.