We No Longer Use the Term “Capacity Building”

Philanthropy’s favorite buzzword masks a deeper problem: it pathologizes community leadership while propping up a system more invested in metrics than in meaningful change.

By Civil Strategies

Over the years, we’ve watched clients develop strategic plans, submit grant proposals, and revise mission statements that lean heavily on the phrase capacity building. It became a catch-all term—convenient, familiar, and seemingly neutral. But we’ve let it go.

The problem isn’t just language. It’s structure. And it’s rooted in a kind of philanthropic paternalism that quietly suggests some people must be fixed, trained, or prepared before they can be trusted with power.

Capacity building implies that something is lacking. That grassroots organizations and community coalitions are incomplete. It casts communities as underdeveloped, when in fact they are often already doing the hardest work with the fewest resources. In practice, the term reinforces the very imbalances that equity work claims to confront.

We’ve sat in rooms where experienced leaders are told they need coaching before being given more responsibility—when in reality, they’ve been carrying the work with clarity and conviction for years. We’ve seen funders, and their consultants, offer technical assistance without asking what’s already working. And we’ve heard the quiet frustration of people whose lived expertise is overlooked in favor of credentials that signal institutional comfort.

So we’ve stopped using the term.

Instead, we talk about resourcing what already exists. Expanding proven practices, deepening infrastructure, and sustaining momentum. We prioritize listening, because communities almost always know what’s needed; they’re just navigating systems never designed with them in mind.

This doesn’t mean support isn’t necessary. It is. Organizations need stability, systems, and time. But how that support is framed matters. Language isn’t neutral. It signals who is seen as credible, and who is expected to prove their worth.

The issue isn’t a lack of capacity. It’s the frameworks built to measure it.

The rise of “evidence-based” practices and tools like SMART goals helped institutionalize a philanthropic industrial complex—one that rewards what’s legible to funders, not what’s transformative on the ground. Support becomes transactional. Metrics become the goal. And frontline wisdom gets sidelined unless it can be packaged in grant-speak or tied to quarterly outcomes.

But we’re not just managing programs—we’re living through a moment where trust is eroding, rights are under threat, and our democracy is at its most fragile. In that context, the way we support communities matters more than ever.

If we’re serious about saving democracy, let's begin with rethinking not just how we fund the work, but why. That means letting go of the idea that people need to be shaped to fit institutional systems; and instead, reshaping our systems to reflect the intelligence, resilience, and strategic clarity that already exist within communities.

Because at some point, we have to ask:
Are we building power, or just building reports?
And right now, the difference couldn’t be more urgent.

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