Organisational capacity for nonprofits

Funders don’t fund
good work.
They fund good
organisations.

Most organisations that lose funding were never weak at the work. They were weak at governance, at evidence, at the things a due-diligence officer checks first. I help nonprofits find those gaps before a funder does.

Take the free assessment → Work with me

27 Capacity areas

16+ Years in the sector

Free No sign-up, ever

Capacity Ladder Report

2.64/5

Moderately developed

Most urgent finding
A funding cliff, not a fundraising problem.

Free

“Score what you can evidence, not what you intend.”

The first rule of the assessment

Start here

Where does your organisation
actually stand?

Twenty-seven capacity areas across three domains, each scored against a five-level rubric from embryonic to exemplary. Thirty to forty-five minutes. You get a report naming what needs urgent attention and a plan sequenced by dependency rather than by score.

It is honest with you

The rubric is written plainly enough that a board member and a programme officer read it the same way. Where two levels both fit, you take the lower one.

It tells you what to do

Not just where the gaps are. For each one: whether it needs training, a hire, an outside consultant, a system, or a decision only your board can make.

It costs nothing, and takes nothing

No email, no account, no sales call. Your answers stay in your browser. Save the file and next year’s run turns a snapshot into a direction of travel.

Start the assessment →

Free · No sign-up · Nothing is sent anywhere

Why this, and not more fundraising training

The proposal is rarely
what lost you the money.

Organisations doing genuinely good work get turned down for reasons that have nothing to do with the work. A board that exists on paper. No policy a donor can ask for. Numbers nobody can evidence. Two grants that both end in the same quarter.

None of that is fixed by writing a better proposal. It is fixed by building the organisation underneath it — in the right order, because most of these problems depend on each other. Governance before systems. Systems before scale.

That sequencing is most of what I do, and it is what the assessment is built to surface.

Work with me

Four ways I usually help

Capacity assessment & improvement plans

Running the assessment with your board and senior staff in one room, then turning the result into a costed, sequenced plan with named owners and dates.

Proposals & grant writing

Concept notes, full proposals, logframes, budget narratives and the evidence sections that decide whether the rest gets read.

Leadership & team development

Training for people who have to run an organisation as well as deliver its work — delegation, governance, and the awkward conversations.

Research, monitoring & evaluation

Designing the measurement before the project starts, so that in three years you can show what changed rather than what you delivered.

Book a call →

Or take the assessment first — it is a better first conversation.

Who you would be working with

Michael Ukwuma

I work on organisational capacity in the nonprofit and development sector. Most of my work is with organisations that are good at their programmes and under-built everywhere else — which is the ordinary condition of a growing nonprofit, not a failing one.

Circle Coordinator at Stichting Viable Community, an EU ANBI-registered foundation
Coach and mentor, Tony Elumelu Foundation
Past Country Lead for Nigeria, HundrED
Member, Nigerian Institute of Management
Fellow of the African Civic Engagement Academy
Voting member, CIVICUS Global Alliance
Founder, SEVICS Africa
Author, with a background in anatomy and public health

More about my work

Funders don’t fund
good work.
They fund good
organisations.