The Inland Empire's prodigious economic and population growth over the past two decades has badly outpaced the growth of its nonprofit sector, an imbalance revealed in everything from overburdened animal-service centers to lagging voting rates.

Bridging the yawning gap is possible but will require bold leadership from leading area educational institutions, academic experts and nonprofit leaders said.

"There is a great untapped potential in our local communities," said Daniel Foster, president and CEO of the Community Foundation Serving Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. "And I've never been more optimistic that our educational leaders are prepared to strengthen regional networks by providing resources and expertise to the nonprofit sector."

Leaders such as Foster are banking part of their expectations of future development in the area's nonprofit sector on the emergence of universities as leaders in creating partnerships and training a stream of savvy nonprofit managers and skilled workers. La Sierra University, a private school in Riverside, recently unveiled an ambitious program that includes certificate courses in nonprofit management and a master's in business administration emphasizing philanthropic work. The school's Center for Philanthropy will also hold training seminars for professionals in Inland Empire nonprofits. The programs launch this fall.

"The Center for Philanthropy is going to develop applied research and partnerships in the community, and is an extremely important initiative to address the need for greater collaboration between nonprofits in the area," Foster said, calling center director Jim Erickson the "great philanthropic leader in the area of the last 25 years."

At Cal Poly Pomona, the management and human resources department within the College of Business now has a nonprofit-management career emphasis, said professor James Bassett. UC Riverside also boasts a certificate program for nonprofit management, and Cal State San Bernardino has a nonprofit management course. Foster said he expects leaders at these institutions to further develop their curriculums.

Allan Collins, director of Hands on Inland Empire and the Pathways Initiative at the Inland Empire United Way, said that with the increasing size and complexity of the nonprofit industry, specialized education is more important than ever.

"The ability of higher education to funnel able professionals into nonprofits is a good thing and much needed," Collins said. "In the past, we often relied on liberal arts majors and people with a passion for service, which is very important, but skills in management and cultivating stakeholders and influencing policy are crucial as well."

Local growth in nonprofit-management education coincides with a national trend.

More than 230 colleges and universities across the United States offer courses in nonprofit leadership, up from 179 in the late 1990s, according to a 2007 study by Seton Hall University. But the Inland Empire has a long way to go. Citing a recent study by the James Irvine Foundation, Foster said that while the two-county region has about 7,500 registered nonprofits, per-capita nonprofit funding from foundations is only about $27, well below the statewide average of $119 and a far cry from the San Francisco metropolitan area, which enjoys more than $600 in per-capita funding to nonprofits.

"These funding disparities are a call to our region to organize ourselves into a strategic, coordinated regional effort," Foster said. "These educational institutions are key to the effort ... they aren't just ivory towers, but developing leaders, using applied research and providing technical assistance on the ground."