Incubating Grassroots Nonprofits: A Service-learning Approach to Organizational Capacity Building with Communities of Immigrant and Refugee Background

Authors

Nancy Winemiller Basinger, University of Utah
Rosemarie Hunter, University of Utah

Abstract

This paper explains the development of a community-university partnership responding to community-identified needs and toward the goal of creating a nonprofit incubator in Salt Lake City, Utah. Our research draws on several years of partnership work with communities of immigrant and refugee experiences. As groups of immigrant and refugee background settle in new communities, they seek to serve the members of their ethnic community. Leaders emerge and begin to organize groups to meet the specialized community needs they have identified. Increasingly these groups are organized as nonprofits. Emerging micro-nonprofits often struggle to find connections and navigate systems that support organizational growth and development. These community organizers seek supports for organizational development that are not currently available in the community—something beyond training and less costly than one-on-one consulting. In response to these requests, we used a service-learning course to pilot the development of the nonprofit incubator. Drawing on community development, service-learning, and nonprofit management literature, this case study highlights the power of university-community partnerships for student learning and capacity building with micro-nonprofits, particularly those serving new arriving populations.

Recommended Citation

Basinger, Nancy Winemiller and Hunter, Rosemarie (2014) "Incubating Grassroots Nonprofits: A Service-learning Approach to Organizational Capacity Building with Communities of Immigrant and Refugee Background," Journal of Community Engagement and Higher Education: Vol. 6: Iss. 2, Article 2.
Available at: https://scholars.indianastate.edu/jcehe/vol6/iss2/2