How to help your fundraising consultant
help you
I recently wrote
a post called “Your fundraising consultant is talking about you behind
your back,” highlighting some of the things that fundraising consultants (and
other types of consultants, for that matter) say about their clients – the
good, the bad, the ugly.
Now that I’ve
offered you a peek behind the curtain, I humbly offer a few words of advice.
What can you do to help your fundraising consultant help you thrive? How can
you be a strong partner and get the very most out of the consultant you’ve
hired?
Tell the truth
You don’t need
to impress us, and you don’t need to evade us. Just tell us what’s what, so we
can get down to the business of helping you strengthen your business. Your last
fundraising mailing was a total bust? Tell us. Executive director and board
chair refuse to ask people for money? Tell us. Your board doesn’t have any
bylaws? Tell us. You don’t really trust consultants? Tell us. Not telling us
the truth just delays the inevitable – you being frustrated with your
consultant, your consultant not delivering on what they said they would
deliver, and lots of your organization’s hard-earned money going down the
drain.
Ask yourself: “What do we already know?”
In my
experience, many organizations hire consultants to tell them what they already
know, but they don’t want to say out loud, or don’t want to say themselves. For
example, they may already know that they need to fire the founding executive
director (the founding executive director herself may already know that!), but
no one wants to be the one to drop that bomb. So the organization hires a
consultant to do a detailed analysis, co-create a strategic plan, and come up
with the same solution that everyone suspected was right in the first place.
There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with that path. Sometimes, it is healthier for the organization to
bring in an outsider to uncover, and speak, these hard truths. Big
organizational decisions can’t just happen on a gut level; they require some
deep thought and investigation. If you start your consulting engagement by
thinking about what you already know, you may come to some clearer, more
efficient, conclusions. You may get to the same place, but you and your
stakeholders may understand the decisions more deeply.
Start with real numbers
If you want your
fundraising consultant to help you raise more money, you need to tell him how
much you have raised. You need to tell him how much you want to raise. You need
to know how you plan to sustain and grow your organization, so you’ll know how
much money you’ll need, so you’ll know how much money you need to raise. You
should tell your consultant how many donors you have now and how many potential
donors you have now. And if you don’t have these numbers – real numbers, not guesses – just tell your consultant. He’ll help
you figure it out. (see “Tell the truth,” above)
Establish shared expectations and shared
accountability
When I start a
consulting engagement, my clients know what they’ll be getting from me, and
they know what I’ll expect from them. We have a shared timeline for
deliverables. So, for example, my clients know that if I’m writing a grant
proposal for them, and they miss an editing deadline, I can’t necessarily guarantee
them online delivery for the proposal (though I almost always pull it off
anyway). And I know that if my clients aren’t happy with a proposal draft, I’ll
have a defined number of subsequent drafts to get it right.
I put all of
this in writing with my clients before we get started on a project. Some
consultants and clients eschew that level of formality, but I find that
everyone is more comfortable, and trusting, if we are clear about what’s going
to happen.
Of course, life
gets in the way! Plans shift, deadlines change, new opportunities come up that
we decide to pursue. By laying the groundwork up-front, through shared
accountability and expectations, we create an environment where shifts in
schedule and priority can happen more seamlessly. And we are better able to
hold one another accountable – it’s a two-way street.
Know that, sometimes, hiring a
fundraising consultant means more work
for you in the short-term
If you hire your
consultant with the expectation that she will solve all of your problems for
you, and you will not have to do any fundraising, you are in for a
disappointment. And if your consultant takes on the job knowing that you have
that expectation, shame on her. Here’s another hard truth: sometimes, your
fundraising consultant will create more work
for you. But it’s better work. Your consultant will help you figure out the
logistics and tactics, so you can get to the more important work of building
relationships with current and potential donors. Sometimes, with consultants,
some short-term pain will lead to a huge long-term gain. If you are matched
with the right consultant, and you are a willing and enthusiastic partner, it
will be worth it.
