"Have the consultant do it"?

The title of this post is written with tongue in cheek, but it does get to what's often a fine line between consulting and contracting. Even when talking with other nonprofit consultants, we don't always agree on where we should draw the line between performing tasks for our client organizations and empowering them to perform these tasks themselves.

As a prime example, when I started as an independent consultant, back in December 2003, one of the main things I did was grant proposal writing. Now, I will rarely accept those types of assignments. Basically, over time, I came to realize that the client was better served by my helping them gain the capacity to write grants in-house. One of my favorite things to do is when I teach workshops on proposal writing (next workshop is August 24 in Santa Cruz!).

Of course, there are times when it's quite legitimate to hire a contract proposal writer to supplement an organization's own capacity, and I'm happy to assist in those situations. But I believe that fund development is so central to any nonprofit organization's survival, that outsourcing it should never be more than a step along the way to building their own abilities.

There are other tasks, however, that are should almost always be outsourced. Among these, in my opinion, is facilitating a strategic planning session. Your organization may have leaders with excellent facilitation skills, but at a planning retreat they are needed as participants. A good facilitator should be neutral, and not a part of any political dynamic that exists in the group, or have a stake in any decisions that the group makes. A good facilitator empowers everybody in the room to speak and be heard, something that's not always comfortable or possible when there's a boss-worker dynamic present.

So, the next time you're in a meeting, and you hear the words, "We'll have a consultant do it," think carefully about what you are asking a consultant to do, and whether it is truly empowering and adding to your capacity to meet your mission.

To partner or to merge...

If you've been working in nonprofit management for any amount of time, you should already be fairly adept at recognizing good partnership opportunities. Whether it's working with a local office supplies retailer to put together back-to-school packages for the low-income children you serve, or joining with other social service agencies that provide complimentary, but different, services in a public outreach campaign, there are a million reasons to work in partnership with other nonprofit agencies and businesses.

But when does the partnership get to the point where you should consider a merger?

A quick checklist might include:

• The existence of ongoing partnerships (or potential for ongoing arrangements) that cover multiple program areas,
  
• Essentially aligned missions (ie: desire to serve the same population or cause),
  
• Similar organizations in adjacent regions,
  
• There's the potential to strengthen organizational capacity (ie: instead of two Executive Directors trying to do it all, one ED and one Development Director),
  
• When you have few funders in common, or your common funder(s) would view you as stronger for having joined forces,
  
• When the new agency will lead to economies of scale, not a bloated bureaucracy,
  
• When your clients will view the merger in a positive light,
  
• When the merger will result in expanded services to your clients,
  
• When one of the organizations is facing a change in leadership (ie: a longtime Executive Director retiring),
  
• When a merger is the best way to achieve the goals in your Strategic Plan,
  
• When the merger can be accomplished without leaving any constituencies behind, and
  
• When the new organization will be stronger and more sustainable than either of the predecessor organizations.

I am not one who regularly pushes merging for the sake of merging. Nor am I one who talks about there being "too many nonprofits." And I certainly am not a proponent of having huge, bureaucratic behemoths attempting community work.

But, the reality is that it is increasingly difficult for small organizations (budgets under $750,000) to operate successfully, and create sustainable funding. As much as I love small, grassroots organizations, sometimes they can better serve their communities as part of a mid-sized agency.

The list above is just a place to start your discussions and soul searching within your nonprofit. You may not meet all of the conditions, and you may have other conditions of your own that lead you to decide to pursue a merger. A merger is the ultimate partnership. It's not to be entered into lightly or without great thought and purpose. But it's not to be feared either.

Painless Strategic Planning

The Nonprofiteer today has a great posting on why funders often ask for your nonprofit's Strategic Plan, and offers a fairly painless outline of a quick and useful planning process.

First, to the question of "Why plan?" the Nonprofiteer offers this:

"Serve as many people as possible" is not a strategic plan; it's a mission--and a relatively uninspiring one, at that. You might try explaining the difference to your ED this way: the mission says what you're going to do, while the strategic plan says how.

And why do funders care about the how? Well, the how gets right to the heart of how you are going to be spending their money. A look at your Strategic Plan will also give them a little insight into your organization's broader goals, potential issues, and future vision -- and get a sense of whether or not your proposal to them is an integral part of that vision.

And the planning process? The Nonprofiteer says it need not be an over-long, over-tedious affair "resulting in a notebook which will collect dust on your shelf," and I couldn't agree more. To be useful, a plan has to be usable. It's got to directly address the issues your organization is facing, any obstacles you've identified to achieving your mission, and offer workable, realistic solutions along with a timeline and identification of the person or persons responsible.

I'll also be a little self-serving here, and include this last quote from the posting:

...It's useful to have a paid person to act as facilitator and scrivener, especially because an outsider can ask the questions all the insiders are too polite or too shy to ask: "Why don't you have a Board give-or-get? What do you mean, you don't have a computer system?"

If you absolutely positively can't bring in a paid consultant, you can do it yourself, with the Board chair acting as facilitator, the team reporters writing their own reports, and the staff formulating it all into a plan; but it'll take longer and you'll fare worse.

As somebody who's done a fair amount of facilitation (and attended a seemingly unfair amount of meetings), I can tell you that's it's nearly impossible to do justice to the role of facilitator and be a full participant at the same time. And the point about having an outside "expert" to point out best practices cannot be over-stressed.

Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants

It is my honor, once again, to host the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants. For those new to blog carnivals, they are a fun way to focus in on a topic and learn about new blogs. This particular carnival was founded by Kivi Leroux Miller of writing911.com.

One of the difficult rules of this carnival is narrowing all the entries down to only the seven best posts of the previous two weeks. That is, the difficult part for the host - for you, the reader, it's a benefit. So, here are the top seven posts that I received (click on the description to go to the blog post):

Nedra Kline Weinreich - On the importance of making your product concrete in social marketing and fundraising

Maryann Devine - On the need for failure, or at least risking failure. Risk taking in fundraising.

Paul Jones - On the top five and bottom five cause-related marketing campaigns of 2006.

Jeff Brooks - On nonprofit "branding" as building a movement.

Nancy Schwartz - On public speaking and making sure your message is heard.

Heather Carpenter - On strategic planning.

Jack Yoest - On nonprofit corporate governance: The Rotary.

Thank you for joining us on this round-up of what's happening on the nonprofit consulting blogs. Happy reading, and best of luck in 2007.