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Whether you are part of a lake association, lake district, or watershed group, you have a chance to contribute your time and skills to make an organization more effective. Extension Lakes is working to make your path up the "capacity ladder" as easy as possible by sharing freely available tools, ideas, and resources for capacity development. We have adopted a framework that includes four distinct facets of capacity: Membership, Internal Functions, External Relationships, and Programmatic. 

Learn more about our effort in the Capacity Overview.

Getting started: Do you want to use capacity building to care for your favorite lake? The first thing to do is to connect with an existing organization! Extension Lakes has a han​dy online directory of hundreds of lake associations and districts in the state. If your lake does not have an organization, you can consider either starting one or getting more involved with a county or regional ​group (those are also in the Lake List directory). If you wish to start an organization on your lake, we recommend the first couple of chapters of People of the Lakes, our free guide to create and manage Wisconsin lake groups. ​

Our YouTube Channel as a dedicated Playlist for Organizational Capacity: Organizational C​apacity for Lake Organizations - YouTube​ - Please explore the videos to begin your capacity education. 

​Wisconsin Lake Group Capacity Survey

In 2020, just as the pandemic was ramping up in Wisconsin, Extension Lakes sent out the Wisconsin Lake Group Capacity Survey to all lake organizations represented in the Lake List. This survey gathered information from lake organizations regarding the four components of capacity: 1) member capacity, 2) relational capacity, 3) organizational capacity, and 4) programmatic capacity. View results (PDF).

We plan to repeat this survey in 2025 so watch for it to land in your inbox!​​