Calling All Trainers and Capacity Builders That Support Community-Led Organizations and Advocates

Today, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) opened a Capacity Building Practitioners Request for Information (RFI). Through this Request for Information, CZI seeks to identify individuals and organizations that provide training and/or capacity building support for frontline organizations and impacted communities across the United States.

“At CZI, we believe that those most impacted by policy issues — like criminal justice reform, immigration, and housing affordability — should drive the solutions to those challenges to create lasting change,” said Regina Schwartz, Director of Movement Capacity Building at CZI. “Yet too often, community-led efforts lack the support, skills, and resources they need to build power, set strategy, and maximize their impact. We want to help build the local infrastructure of expert community-embedded trainers to support reform over the long term.”

In their 2015 letter to their daughter announcing the creation of CZI, Co-Founders and Co-CEOs Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg wrote, “we must participate in policy and advocacy to shape debates. Many institutions are unwilling to do this, but progress must be supported by movements to be sustainable.” Since then, CZI has been learning from and working with those on the front-lines of efforts to drive change in criminal justice reform, immigration, housing, and other issues that impact the lives of millions of people.

CZI is inspired by the leaders working for change every day — like the growing number of formerly incarcerated leaders who are driving key criminal justice reform efforts and other groups that are joining together to respond to the systemic inequalities at the heart of our issue areas.

We will accept submissions from capacity builders with a minimum 3-year demonstrated track record of creating action-oriented, interactive, and self-directed learning experiences for social justice organizations and impacted communities. We may contact respondents to provide further information, share contracting opportunities, and apply for funding programs.

CZI intends to use RFI responses to develop future funding strategies to support capacity builders. Those strategies will be designed to strengthen organizations on the frontlines of social change, including those working within CZI’s issue priorities of criminal justice reform, housing affordability, and immigration reform.

Request for Information is open through 11:59 pm PDT on July 29, 2019. For more information, click here.