There are times in the life of almost every person or organization when hiring an outside person to help you think through or get through a certain time or situation can be very helpful. For a nonprofit organization's fundraising program, these times are characterized by one or more of the following situations:

• Your organization needs advice on how to improve its overall fundraising or some particular aspect of fundraising. You need someone with skill and knowledge who cares about the issues your organization is concerned with but is far enough removed to be able to “see the forest.”
• You need help deciding on a course of action: Can you really launch a capital campaign now? Would a legacy giving program be a good strategy to explore? Should you create a separate 501(c)(4) organization so you can do more direct lobbying?
• You need someone to do a time‐limited piece of work: run a special event, train the board in fundraising, create and help implement a recurring donor program, redesign your website, research funding sources, or write a proposal.
• You need someone to provide guidance and answer questions in designing the fundraising staff's work plan, especially when a bright and energetic but inexperienced staff person needs help getting up to speed.
• You need someone to run the development function of your organization temporarily until staff can be replaced.
• You need help with fundraising as you make a transition from a founder to a new executive director, or during a major change in direction, goals, and structure, or during a name change.
• Your organization has relied on government or foundation funding sources, and you need help getting out of the funding crisis that cutbacks in these funds have created.

The skills of consulting, coaching, mentoring, or training are all similar; sometimes one person is able to perform all of these functions. However, knowing the differences among them may help you decide which you need. As we say in consulting, knowing what you need puts you 90% closer to being able to get it. Here is how these helping functions apply to fundraising.

CONSULTANT

A consultant works in partnership with an organization (usually working closely with one or two people in the organization) on a time‐limited project or on a specific area of focus. How much that person does, as opposed to what they advise you to do, will depend on the consultant and on the project, but the job of a consultant is generally to get out of the organization as quickly as possible without the organization becoming reliant on them. Consultants are experts who have answers, and who can also lead your organization to find the best answer for any question that arises. Consultants are hired primarily for their knowledge and their ability to impart that knowledge. They focus on what will improve effectiveness and increase success, and they work for the organization (rather than for a person in the organization).

TRAINER

A trainer provides a workshop, seminar, or in‐service presentation that can last from 20 minutes to several days to a group of people who all need to know the same thing and, ideally, are about to embark together on a fundraising task. Trainers will often provide training to boards, major donor committees, or other subsets of an organization. Trainers will also work with many organizations at once. (Most trainers are also consultants, although many consultants are not trainers.)

MENTOR

A mentor works with one person in the role of wise older sibling and role model and serves as that person's guide. Someone with several decades of fundraising experience is teamed up with someone who is learning on the job. The person being mentored sees attributes, qualities, or abilities in the mentor that they wish to learn or emulate. Whereas a trainer or consultant is hired for a specific amount of time and a particular piece of work, a mentor is usually a volunteer, and may work with a mentee for years. Mentors are often in work situations with the people they are mentoring, which makes access to each other easy.

COACH

A coach can work with one person, several people, or an entire organization to help with the process of making decisions, imagining the future, and creating a plan to get there. In coaching, the starting point is the client's desire for personal and professional success. Coaching is not about how you came to be in the situation you are in, but rather about getting you from where you are now to a future that you want. Coaches clarify goals and help people through difficult or large transitions. Coaches are not generally used for how‐to information or practical training, just as trainers generally don't help organizations deal with the death of a founder or help an executive director be a better manager.

Clearly, the lines among these roles are malleable and permeable, and the types of people who work in these fields will vary a great deal. This chapter deals mostly with how and when an organization should use a consultant; however, knowing the definitions of coaching, training, and mentoring may help you realize when what you need is not a consultant but one of the other types of helpers.

WORKING WITH A FUNDRAISING CONSULTANT

A consultant's work with your organization will be characterized by three things: it is time‐limited (lasting either a few hours a week or a few days a month, or based on a contract for a specific number of months), the consultant is not involved in day‐to‐day operations, and there is more emphasis on advice and guidance than on doing hands‐on fundraising work.

Partly because the services of a consultant are time‐limited, the concept of employing someone in that capacity carries a negative meaning for many people. The jokes “A consultant borrows your watch to tell you the time,” or “A consultant gives free advice for a price” are said only half in jest.

The problem of finding a reliable and competent consultant is compounded by the sheer number of consultants. As with nearly any profession, there are competent and incompetent consultants in the fundraising field, but a more common problem is that neither the consultant nor the organization has clear expectations of each other, and the work ends with neither feeling satisfied.

When you talk to a potential consultant, be as clear as you can about what you need and be willing to answer a lot of questions. The consultant is not being nosy but rather making sure the work is something that they can do.

Sometimes people enter the consulting field because they like fundraising work, but are excited that they don't have to carry the responsibility for the success or failure of any organization. What those people fail to see, however, is that consultants carry a different level of responsibility, resting on the following factors:

• The advice they give must be correct. If implemented, it must work.
• They must trust others to implement plans that they have helped the organization to make. The plan must be communicated clearly and be appropriate to the level of skills and resources of the people carrying it out, or to which people have access. The process of generating the suggestions or putting the plan in place must include all the people who will be implementing it.
• They must know the difference between what can be learned by teaching, guiding, and giving advice, and what can only be learned from experience.
• They must know what they can do for an organization and what an organization can only do for itself.

If they fail in these aspects, they will not be consultants for long.

WHAT FUNDRAISING CONSULTANTS CAN DO

Here is a sample list of fundraising tasks for which it is appropriate to use a consultant:

• Create fundraising plans and help implement and evaluate those plans
• Research prospective donors (individuals, corporations, foundations, religious sources) and write proposals for funding on a case‐by‐case basis
• Recommend and even set up a database for keeping track of donor information
• Conduct feasibility studies
• Design and sometimes conduct direct mail campaigns
• Design (and manage) an online fundraising strategy
• Create a communications plan
• Study and recommend structural changes in an organization to improve functioning and fundraising efficiency
• Help hire fundraising staff, including writing job descriptions and advertising for and interviewing candidates
• Organize special events
• Set up any other fundraising strategy that an organization has decided to use

If the consultant is also a trainer, they can do the following:

• Train and motivate people in all aspects of fundraising
• Help board members understand their responsibilities
• Help organizations recruit and train good board members

WHAT FUNDRAISING CONSULTANTS GENERALLY DON'T DO

Fundraising consultants are not expected to do the following activities:

• Actually solicit money from individuals. (In fact, in states where consulting is regulated, such as California, consultants who do solicit funds must register separately from those who don't and generally have a higher degree of oversight from the state.)
• Use their personal contacts to raise money. Consultants often know a great deal about wealthy givers in the community; with discretion, they can share that knowledge in prospect research. However, consultants do not go from job to job with their own lists of prospects.
• Guarantee their work. There are no absolutes in fundraising. There is a body of fundraising knowledge, largely based on common sense, and there are many applications of this knowledge. No strategy will work every time for every nonprofit.

HOW TO CHOOSE A CONSULTANT

Once you have decided that a consultant would be helpful, here are the kinds of things to look for in that person.

PAYING CONSULTANTS

There are no standards or guidelines for how much to pay a consultant. A high price does not necessarily mean better performance or more accountability, but a price that seems too good to be true probably is. By hiring a consultant, you are investing in the present so you will have more money in the future.

Most consultants charge by the day or the hour, but some charge by the job. A person's daily rate is usually lower overall than if you were paying the hourly rate for a full day; several days' work should average out to a lower fee per day than just a one‐day job. Consultants also charge for all their expenses: hotels, meals, telephone, photocopying, and travel are the most common. You can cut some of these costs by offering to house the consultant in someone's home and by providing meals, but if you do that, make sure the consultant is comfortable with the placement and can get a good night's sleep.

Establish clearly what you are paying for. For example, you pay for the consultant's time, but when does that time start? In some cases, the time starts when the consultant reaches the office of the client or the training site. Even if it takes a day to get there, some do not charge until they arrive. Other consultants start charging the minute they leave their houses or offices. Find out, too, whether the consultant charges for all phone calls and emails, particularly those that are not substantive, such as setting up meeting times or confirming dates, and at what rate.

If you are hiring a consultant for several days or months of work, build in evaluation points. For example, you might say, “At the end of one month, we will evaluate progress and decide whether or not to continue or whether the plan needs to be modified.” This practice is best for the consultant, too, who may need to re‐estimate the time involved or who may have run into some unforeseen obstacles. It is important to have a written statement or contract that you both sign spelling out your understanding of the consultant's role, fees, and expenses. For the same reasons as discussed in the previous chapter on hiring a development director, never hire a consultant on a contingency or commission basis.

NO MIRACLE WORKERS

Consultants, coaches, trainers, and mentors play an increasingly important role in helping organizations or specific people in organizations increase their fundraising ability and solve problems. They are very important in helping board members and volunteers understand all the ways they can raise money and why they should be involved in fundraising. But similar to the results generally reported from individuals in psychotherapy, it seems that one‐third of the organizations who hire outside help do better, one‐third do worse, and one‐third stay about the same. Consultants cannot create motivation and cannot force people to change bad habits. Timing is key. Is your organization willing to change? Or do you simply want to want to change? Are there major personality conflicts that need to be addressed before fundraising can begin? Are there other hidden problems?

During the first meeting with your organization, a good consultant should be able to help you figure out whether consulting is what you need. If it is, they can also help you determine what the best use of their time would be. In the end, for a consultant's time to be truly useful, your organization has to be willing to hear and do what the consultant says.