“You Can’t Just Start and Expect It to Work”: An Investigation of Strategic Capacity Building in Community Sport Organizations
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Capacity building is a targeted approach to addressing organizational challenges by focusing development efforts on specific needs. Utilizing Millar and Doherty’s process model of capacity building, the purpose of this study was to (a) gain insight into the nature of the conditions and processes of capacity building in the community sport context and (b) examine the veracity of the proposed model. Interviews were conducted with organizational members from two community sport organizations that were purposefully chosen and happened to have introduced new programs: one that experienced successful capacity building that enhanced program and service delivery and one that experienced unsuccessful capacity building where organizational needs were not effectively addressed. Findings revealed that the thoroughness of the needs assessment, the selection of appropriate capacity building strategies, and readiness to build capacity were key factors in the (lack of) success of the capacity building efforts. Implications for practice and future research on organizational capacity building are presented.
Millar is with the Department of Kinesiology, Faculty of Human Kinetics, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Doherty is with the School of Kinesiology, Faculty of Health Sciences, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada.
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