Center Colorado HIV / AIDS Community Partnership

The Situation

The Colorado HIV / AIDS Community Partnership was created by three local foundations in collaboration with the National AIDS Fund. As its first project, it asked the state’s five independent Colorado AIDS Projects (CAPs) to engage in a sustainability planning project. As federal funding for HIV / AIDS services declines and demand for services increases, finding ways to improve the sustainability of these organizations has become even more important.

The Process

The CAPs selected Nonprofit Impact to facilitate the project, the first stage of which was to conduct sustainability assessments for each of the five organizations. Karen worked to ensure that each assessment highlighted the uniqueness of that CAPs’ work and geographic service area and provided a set of organization-specific recommendations to improve sustainability.

Next, the staff and board leaders of the CAPs came together to explore what new types of collaboration might be possible. The process served to build trust among the CAPs so that these critical issues could be discussed in a substantive way. Karen also worked to keep the funders in the loop. Christiano Sosa, Program Officer for the Denver Foundation and Partnership leader noted, “Nonprofit Impact attended our meetings and became a bridge between the CAPs’ collective work and what the Partnership was doing. We had not anticipated how important that bridge would be .”

The Results

The sustainability project is now in its third year and the CAPs are exploring the possibility of consolidating some their operations. A transition committee that includes staff and board leaders from each of the CAPs is guiding the process and maintaining the relationships that were built during the project. Christiano said, “We needed this honest, confidential assessment among the CAPs to make this happen.”