Community Action Partnership of New Jersey was formed in 2013 as a nonprofit organization to support the Community Action Agency Network in New Jersey.
Recently reconstituted, Community Action Partnership of New Jersey shares a long, proud history of community action in our state, and its programs embody all of the best practices identified in over 50 years of working to help people living in poverty. CAP NJ exists to help strengthen the network of CAAs and to provide training and technical assistance to strengthen advocacy efforts, collaboration efforts and effectiveness.
Community Action Partnership of New Jersey provides training and technical assistance to Community Services Block Grant-eligible entities and partners in New Jersey, also known as Community Action Agencies, or CAAs. We work together to reduce poverty, promote self-sufficiency and build stronger communities.
CAP NJ serves as a liaison between state and federal offices and associations, and advocates on behalf of New Jersey Community Action Agencies, which results in a stronger network of agencies, programs and outcomes in the community.
Independently and collectively, the CAAs are working to eliminate the causes of poverty and to open doors to self-sufficiency. Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) funding supports projects that:
With the support of CSBG funding, New Jersey’s Department of Community Affairs and Community Action Agencies work together to achieve the following goals for low-income individuals:
By working together, agencies increase their capacity to impact poverty.
Over 1,000 eligible entities receive CSBG funding annually.
Eligible entities leverage funds from other federal sources, state and local governments, and private sources to support an array of Community Action Programs that help low-income people chart a path out of poverty.
CSBG funding served 16,997,192 individuals, or 7,335,240 families, in FY 2017. Of those served, more than 41.12 percent of the clients were children and over 21.11 percent were people 55 years of age and older.
Community Action changes people’s lives, embodies the spirit of hope, improves communities and makes America a better place to live. We care about the entire community and we are dedicated to helping people help themselves and each other.
Community Action Agencies (CAAs) are nonprofit private and public organizations established under the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 to fight America's War on Poverty. CAAs act as a safety net, collaborating with other public and nonprofit private agencies to help people in poverty by delivering impactful services and resources.
With over 50 years of providing critical services to individuals and families, the network of Community Action Agencies today includes more than 1,000 national, state and local agencies that reach children and families in 99 percent of America’s counties and provide life-altering opportunities.
The Community Action Network is unique in that it:
Community Action Agencies address causes of poverty, not symptoms. They work to ensure their community offers everyone opportunities to become economically secure. The CAA Network is invested in individuals and their families who are striving to develop skills or need help with basic needs that are impossible to address when living in poverty.
Community Action Agencies are uniquely structured to include representation from the people they help. This is most readily apparent in the structure of a CAA board: Community Action Agencies are required to have a tripartite board that made up of equal representation from the local private sector, the local public sector, and low-income community members.
This structure brings together community leaders from each of these groups to collaborate in developing responses to local needs. The structure thus encourages maximum feasible participation in both the creation and the administration of Community Action Programs.
Through a collaborative training method, the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs and CAP NJ provide mandatory and required training for all new CAA board members. The training helps ensure that agency board members understand CSBG funding and the unique requirements of being a CAA board member. The training also helps to build a forward-looking CAA board, with members invested in sustaining the organization and impacting poverty in their local community.
CAP NJ also is the New Jersey provider for the RPIC initiative. RPIC stands for Regional Performance and Innovation Consortia. A collaboration of the state associations, this endeavor is funded by the Office of Community Services to support training and technical assistance efforts throughout the CSBG network.
RPIC focuses on the following goals:
CAP NJ also convenes regional trainings, serves as a resource for the entire CSBG network, and acts as an advocate for the entire network, locally and nationally.
Community Action Partnership of New Jersey was formed in 2013 as a nonprofit organization to support the Community Action Agency Network in New Jersey.
1802 Route 31 North
Suite 2-355 | Clinton, NJ
info@capnj.org
