The Center for Capacity Building (The Center) supports the Alliance’s mission to end the problem of homelessness by building the capacity of communities to respond to new and emerging challenges and opportunities. Our approach to capacity building is outcome-based, with a clear focus on having a measurable impact in communities. The Alliance works with communities to build their capacity in three ways:

Customized Community Level Support

• Systems Change – The Center is available to help communities develop plans and implement strategies to transform their homeless systems at the state, county, and city levels. We achieve this goal in communities through a combination of political will-building strategies, planning support, and training for key stakeholders responsible for systems-level change.
• Organizational Change – Systems change will eventually lead to organizational change. Organizations often find themselves in need of support to re-align their staff, develop internal program plans, and train staff on their new roles and responsibilities. The Center helps organizations with these issues as well as others, including building new partnerships and developing outcome-based performance measures.
• Practice-Level Skill Building – Organizations change when the individuals in those organizations have the skills to change. The Alliance works within an organization or with groups of organizations to develop their skills on the front line. This includes training case managers on new models and strategies for providing services in a rapid re-housing context or increasing staff effectiveness at conducting landlord outreach and securing housing for families that enter their program.

For more information about receiving customized community-level support from the Alliance, contact Damien Heath, Director of the Center for Capacity Building, at dheath@naeh.org or 202-942-8252.

Dissemination of Lessons Learned

• The Keys - As we work with communities and go deep into their successes, struggles, and lessons learned, we will document and share those lessons learned through our quarterly web newsletter The Keys. The newsletter will feature a spotlight on a particular community, organization, or individual leader that is playing a key role in ending homelessness, a new tool or resource for organizations or community leaders to use to implement key strategies to end homelessness, and a FAQ section with answers to some of our common TA requests.
• Virtual Learning Series - Quarterly web trainings will also be offered by The Center on various topics as a response to some of our common TA requests, as well as other key topics or lessons learned from our deeper work in other communities that we feel would be valuable to share more broadly.
• Capacity Building Discussion Forum – Communities can also join The Center’s online forum, Community ShareNet, and get advice not just from the Alliance but from their peers across the country. Communities can upload documents or tools they are developing and request feedback. Individuals can comment on other tools or resources made available by other communities. There is also a discussion forum in which the Alliance staff and other community members will be featured as discussion topic leaders.

General Technical Assistance Inquiries and Support

If you have general technical assistance questions, please email us at thecenter@naeh.org. We may post your question in our discussion forum to allow others to respond to your email as well. We will make every attempt to respond to your request in within 48 hours, but it may take longer based on demand.