How to Work Effectively with an Outside Consultant

As your nonprofit adapts in the face of the COVID-19 virus, strategic guidance from expert consultants can prove invaluable. Whether planning your strategy, revamping your brand, or rethinking your fundraising strategy — an outside consultant can bring much-needed insight to propel your organization forward. But, you want to make that relationship effective and ensure that the outcome meets your needs. Based on my 25 years of experience in working with nonprofits, I offer the following tips for working effectively with an outside consultant or agency.

Provide Sufficient Information

Hiring a consultant can provide the expertise that you don’t have in-house, but that doesn’t mean that you can take a backseat role. No one knows your organization as well as you do, and you’ll need to be highly involved in the project. Good consultants will engage you in that process. They will want to understand the essence of your entity, elicit ideas, and bring information together in new ways to generate insights. To do so, the consultant will want to review information about your organization and talk with many people, from clients to board members. Make sure that you can supply the relevant documents and that stakeholders can set aside time to talk.

Have a Clear Process

Whether developing a strategic plan or a brand, it’s important to know what you are aiming for and how you will get there. Your consultant should provide the roadmap that they will use to engage your team through an iterative process that includes key stakeholders. That plan should include the key activities, milestones, and outcomes for each step in the process. Clarify who will be involved in each phase, who will make the decisions — and when they will make them — and when deliverables are due. Your job is to provide the appropriate information, context, and ideas, provide feedback on the work presented, and make decisions so the project can move forward.

Understand How Decisions Will Be Made

Decisiveness keeps projects moving forward. Put a plan in place that ensures decisions can be made in a timely manner. To facilitate this, you’ll need to decide in advance who will give feedback and how, who will make the final decision, and how that decision will be made. This includes considerations for how the board will be involved in the process — what discussions and presentations will happen and what decisions they will make. Also, consider whether key decisions will be made if not everyone can be present at a meeting or if a conscious determination will be made to delay the project to include everyone.

Presenting to the Board

Even if intermediate decisions have been delegated to a committee or staff, keeping the board involved as the project moves forward increases the board’s buy-in and eases the way for final approval. My clients have found it helpful to have me make a presentation to the board at key points in the project. Getting information from an outside expert can help the board move past insularity. Also, because I’ve done the research and looked at alternative approaches, I can answer questions or provide additional context to facilitate decision-making.

However, there is a flip side to this. For some organizations, the better choice is to have committee members, not the consultant, make presentations to the board, to gain the trust of others. Having a board member who has bought into the concept present to the board can be an effective way to show that there is internal support for the initiative. Assess your organizational culture and determine which route will be most effective in gaining the trust needed to get buy-in for ideas.

Build Your Project Team

For very small nonprofits, a project team may be one or two people. For larger organizations, team members should represent a variety of stakeholders, such as executive-level staff, a member of the board, and perhaps, some frontline staff members. Members of the team should be willing to express their ideas and listen to the ideas of others. They should also understand and support the overall goals of the project. And, remember, team meetings and reviews of materials presented will take time. Make sure that every team member is given the time to do the required work.

Designate a Point Person

At the beginning of the project, decide who will be your organization’s liaison to the consultant. The point person may be asked to contact people who are going to be interviewed, provide background information and documents, arrange meetings, and make sure that information is shared with key stakeholders. 

Set a Schedule

The consultant needs to know about events that will affect the availability of your team. Organizational events, board meetings, vacations, maternity leave can affect the workflow and ability to provide needed feedback and approvals. Working out a schedule together eliminates delays and reduces stress for both your team and the consultant.

Have a Plan for Communicating

To facilitate a smooth process, determine who will be included on the project and how you will communicate with your group — email, phone calls, a project management system, Zoom, Skype, etc. — and how you will exchange documents and comments on the documents: as PDFs, Google docs, or Word documents. It’s also a good idea to schedule a standing call in order to reserve time each week, even for quick status updates. This can reduce the problems in scheduling meetings that can delay the completion of a project.

Stumbling Blocks That Raise Costs

Delaying feedback or reversing decisions already made can stall or even stop a project. Moreover, revising decisions already made can undermine the viability of the project and incur more costs. This can happen when the plan is for the executive director to make decisions but, when it comes time to give final approval, board members want to express their opinions and second-guess or reverse decisions already made. Or a decision-maker on the staff or board is replaced and the new person wants to undo prior decisions.

To avoid such costly delays, provide the board or a committee with regular updates and opportunities to provide feedback. Discuss any serious concerns with the consultant and team so a satisfactory resolution is reached and costly backtracking is avoided.

Ultimately, you want to achieve a successful outcome for your organization, and want to have a positive experience with your consultant. A good consultant should understand these issues and guide you through them so that you can achieve both.

Previously published in Philanthropy News Digest