The Local Public Sector Alliance (LPSA) is a nonprofit organization seeking to promote inclusive, equitable societies by enriching the understanding of decentralization and localization as complex, cross-cutting, and multi-stakeholder reforms. To advance this work, LPSA engaged a Capstone team to perform a regional analysis on the empowerment of subnational governance institutions in South and East Asia. The team utilized the Local Governance Institutions Comparative Assessment (LoGICA) framework—an assessment tool that analyzes a country’s multilevel governance structure, subnational institutions, and intergovernmental systems contributing to inclusive governance, effective public service delivery, and sustainable localized development. The team conducted fieldwork in Bangladesh to compare the country's de facto versus de jure multi-level governance system, and worked with local counterparts to prepare an in-depth assessment of the country’s subnational governance institutions. The team’s final report includes a regional analysis that draws upon desk research and interviews with country experts, to be distributed among LPSA’s professional network.

Hewnoaks Artist Residency is a small nonprofit located in Lovell, Maine that provides artists the gift of space and unstructured time to advance their work. Relying heavily on support from grants, Hewnoaks engaged the Capstone team to provide evidence-based guidance and recommendations on ways to diversify its funding resources and build a better fundraising apparatus. The team completed surveys and interviews of key stakeholders and researched fundraising strategies and peer organizations that completed similar expansions. Based on its findings, the Capstone team devised an overall fundraising strategy for Hewnoaks and developed key recommendations and tools, including a three-year implementation plan, strategies for augmenting volunteer and board member engagement, fundraising event best practices, and a detailed guide to enhance the donor engagement cycle of the organization.