STRENGTHEN
Measure & lead.
Diagnose where your organization actually stands today, then lead it forward with stronger governance and clearer strategy.
CapWorks, Inc. is a connected team of senior specialists organized around The Capacity Index — an objective, 10-domain measure of how your organization is really doing.
Nonprofits are the connective tissue of our communities — feeding people, housing families, healing trauma, educating the next generation, protecting the vulnerable. When their capacity grows, everything they touch grows with it.
Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; Candid; Giving USA.
More people reached, more often, with services that actually arrive when they're needed.
Better-designed programs, run with fidelity, producing measurable results funders trust.
A stronger reputation among funders, partners and the people you serve — which compounds every other gain.
The reason the organization exists, finally backed by the infrastructure to deliver on it consistently.
That is what capacity building is really for: more service, better outcomes, stronger standing, mission delivered — and a community visibly better off because the nonprofits in it are stronger.
Each pillar is staffed with senior specialists who actually know that domain — and they work together, so the mission doesn't get lost in handoffs.
Diagnose where your organization actually stands today, then lead it forward with stronger governance and clearer strategy.
Stand a nonprofit up correctly, design programs funders will back, and run the finance and compliance machinery underneath it all.
Diversify revenue, build the donor pipeline, win grants federal to local — and tell the story that makes funders believe.
Our proprietary instrument scores your organization across 10 strategic domains, turning “we think we're okay” into an objective baseline you can track, defend to funders, and improve year over year.
Every nonprofit that comes to us gets a complimentary baseline Capacity Index. An honest read on where you stand today, and a structured conversation about what it means. No obligation, no sales pitch.
Request your free Index →| Community Image & Reputation | How those you serve perceive your organization. |
|---|---|
| Funding Diversity & Stability | Concentration risk across your revenue mix. |
| Fund Development Health | Pipeline, donor retention, development capacity. |
| Board Governance & Leadership | Engagement, structure and effectiveness. |
| Staff Engagement & Satisfaction | Workforce stability, morale and capacity. |
| Program Quality & Fidelity | Whether programs run as designed. |
| Outcomes & Impact Measurement | Your ability to prove the difference you make. |
| Stakeholder & Client Satisfaction | The experience of the people you serve. |
| Strategic Clarity & Adaptability | Focus, and the ability to change course fast. |
| Operations & Compliance | The infrastructure that holds it all together. |
No mystery, no padded scope. Four steps from where you are to where you need to be.
We run a baseline Capacity Index and talk honestly about where you stand.
A scoped plan: priorities, the right specialists, timeline and clear cost.
Filings, applications, campaigns, systems built — you review, not chase.
Re-benchmark over time and pivot as the funding landscape shifts.
CapWorks is led by a principal — an attorney and public-health professional whose two decades of work in South Florida have moved fluidly between epidemiology, nonprofit leadership, the practice of law, and constitutional advocacy. The through line is consistent: building the capacity of organizations and people to serve their communities better.
His career began in public health and epidemiology. As Health and Safety Director for the American Red Cross in the Tampa Bay Area, he managed CPR, aquatics, disaster, first-aid and emergency-response training across the region and built partnerships with community organizations to harden local disaster preparedness. He then served as Senior Director at Miami Behavioral Health, where he developed quality-improvement systems to benchmark and measure clinical outcomes and led public mental-health awareness campaigns.
In 2003 he founded and led Non-Profit Capacity Builders, Inc. as President, marketing capacity-building services to nonprofits across South Florida and delivering fund development, IRS compliance and policy consultation to clients. He then served as Assistant Director of the Broward County Health Department, directing $20 million in contracted services and $40 million in pharmaceuticals, managing 170 staff and acting as media spokesperson during a period of intense public-health activity.
Turning fully to law, he served as Supervising Attorney at Legal Aid Service of Broward County, running the Consumer, Foreclosure, Human Rights and Health units and generating $1.5 million in grant funding for the unit. There he led litigation in a major multi-plaintiff suit against a foreclosure-rescue scheme targeting Black women at places of worship — a deliberate departure from his prior practice that opened the next chapter of his career: housing rights.
In 2008 he opened the his own private legal practice, growing it into a firm of four attorneys and twelve staff with annual gross revenue above $1.8 million. Across a fifteen-year arc of practice, the principal expanded the scope of his work into six independent legal areas — and, more importantly, litigated and prevailed in numerous high-profile cases in each one. He led pro bono litigation in several landmark civil-rights and constitutional-law cases, including the leading challenges to Florida's ban on same-sex marriage.
As foreclosures swept South Florida, he was selected by the County Mayor to lead Broward County's home-retention response to the crisis. He went on to co-found the Broward Housing Council, where he helped shape housing policy, advance affordable-housing initiatives and improve conditions for working families. His housing-rights work continues alongside ongoing involvement with Legal Aid Service of Broward County and Broward Lawyers Care.
Represented an FAU journalism student denied in-state tuition because Florida refused to recognize his lawful same-sex marriage (entered in Massachusetts in 2013). In what would be his first appeal, the principal used a unique procedural mechanism to put the case on a fast track to the Florida Supreme Court — directly challenging then-Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and a litigation team that grew to more than 21 lawyers. The matter drew over 75 amicus briefs from states (including California) and companies including Apple and Walt Disney, and became part of the national marriage-equality litigation that culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court's decision. Legal experts agreed he was on track to prevail in Florida.
Represented Mikey Verdugo — a former Hollywood, Florida police officer (and HGTV Design Star contestant) fired after a 1996 video surfaced online — to defend his police certification and reinstate his career. He pressed LGBT-discrimination claims against the City of Hollywood and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement at a time when no state or federal law explicitly prohibited the conduct. As a relatively new attorney leading a firm with far fewer resources, he stood alone against opposing teams of five to eight attorneys, self-funded the litigation, and prevailed — helping move LGBT-discrimination law forward in Florida.
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, he met with more than 100 Occupy protesters who had evidence the city planned to forcibly dismantle the nearly 200-person encampment on Thanksgiving morning — a move that would have denied them court access for days. He drafted the suit and an emergency injunction in two hours and hand-delivered it to the chief judge at 4:40 PM. The judge summoned the mayor and the city's legal team to an emergency evening hearing and granted the injunction. The ruling made Fort Lauderdale one of only two U.S. cities to recognize Occupy encampments as a constitutionally protected form of free speech.
His longest-running commitment is 22 years of volunteer leadership at a major South Florida multi-center community health program, culminating in board service and Vice Chair terms. His public-health and legal expertise helped catalyze an extraordinary 16-fold growth in operating revenue — from $10 million to $160 million — and the addition of ten primary health-care centers serving millions of South Floridians.
Throughout the same period, the principal dedicated more than $1.1 million in pro bono legal services. The largest single arena of that work was nonprofit clients — nonprofit formation, day-to-day contractual and legal guidance, and zealous representation in court when a mission was under threat. His firm also contributed over $296,000 in additional charitable giving.
That is the kind of leadership you get — one career bridging public health, law, nonprofit leadership and constitutional advocacy, now pointed entirely at strengthening, building and growing your nonprofit.
The principal is the spine — but a CapWorks engagement is staffed by a connected team. We bring in senior professionals from the disciplines a nonprofit actually needs, not consultants pretending to know everything.
Whether you're forming a brand-new nonprofit or strengthening one that already exists, the first step is the same: an honest, objective read on where you stand.
We'll be in touch within two business days to schedule your free Capacity Index.