In its inaugural year, The Center for Nonprofit Success has begun providing professional development, resources and tools for a couple dozen nonprofit organizations throughout Central Texas.
Called a capacity-building organization because it aims to give back time to local nonprofit leaders, the center is a partnership between the Georgetown Health Foundation and the Central Texas Community Foundation.
The overview
While The Center for Nonprofit Success officially launched in June, the team has been working for the last two years to build its platform, said Andy Davis, vice president of education and capacity building at the Georgetown Health Foundation.
At its core, the organization offers an online portal that members can access 24/7, Executive Director Melinda Brasher said.
One main part of that portal uses a closed-loop AI tool to curate answers and resources pulling on information from the Standards for Excellence Institute, a framework promoting ethics and accountability in the nonprofit sector. Among those resources are best practices and templates to guide operations, governance and volunteer management, Davis said.
“The website is extremely packed with resources that folks need—that folks have been asking us for—and right now we’re trying to improve in every way we can,” Davis said.
Other available resources include a message board where nonprofit leaders can ask questions, share best practices and engage with one another. Additionally, when fellow capacity-building organization Mission Capital closed, the center received some of its assets, including a nonprofit sector job board that “everyone loved,” Brasher said.
The center is also working to host some in-person events to further build community among local nonprofits.
“We know that sometimes the best learning comes from your peers, so there’s an outlet for that,” Brasher said.
Diving in deeper
The Center for Nonprofit Success launched with 46 founding members and has since grown to about 68 members, Brasher said.
The organization serves a 30-county territory across Central Texas and any nonprofit in that area can join. Annual membership rates start at $99 and are scaled based on the nonprofit’s revenue.
“A lot of them are coming in … they don't have time, they don't have access to resources, they don't have money for these resources,” Brasher said. “For $99 for the year, they can get their entire staff, their entire board of directors in the system to access these resources.”
Looking ahead
Brasher said one of her big goals is to continue to work with the center’s developer, Chris Garza, to improve user experience on the platform. Following that, they want to create an app that would allow easier access to resources and community conversations from anywhere.
This, she hopes, will allow the group to continue to add more members in 2027.
Davis also said there are opportunities to look outside the 30-county area and see who beyond that needs the center’s services the most, particularly nonprofits servicing rural communities.
The impact
“We are helping [nonprofits] build capacity so that they can go out and do their mission work. When nonprofits can feed more people, help the unhoused, whatever their mission is, it’s doing good for the community as a whole, and so we’re here to help our nonprofits go out and do that work.”
Melinda Brasher, The Center for Nonprofit Success executive director
“What we have tried to build is a resource center that allows [nonprofits] to be efficient at their job by providing answers to questions in a very timely manner and giving them access to others in their community that they can lean on for peer support.”
Andy Davis, Georgetown Health Foundation vice president of education and capacity building
