Building a successful fundraising consultant partnership

Fundraising consultants bring years of experience and expertise to nonprofit missions. They help with crucial fundraising tasks, from guiding your upcoming capital campaign to revamping it marketing materials to identify the most effective fundraising ideas. These strategic partners can expand your organization’s capacity and help you raise more money for your cause.

However, hiring a fundraising consultant that meets your needs is just the first step. To truly unlock your consultant’s potential, view the engagement as a collaboration. And the basis of every good collaboration is a strong relationship.

In this guide, we explore the benefits of working with a fundraising consultant and provide tips for building a partnership that delivers the impactful results your nonprofit needs.

The Value of a Fundraising Consultant

Hiring external advisors is an investment in the future of your organization. While the initial costs may sometimes cause hesitation, the return on investment (ROI) of a successful job often far outweighs the costs. According to Convergent Nonprofit SolutionsWorking with a consultant offers the following benefits for nonprofits:

• Experience and expertise: Fundraising consultants have years of experience in their field that they can leverage as they work with your nonprofit. This allows them to suggest strategies and solutions that your team might not have thought of.

• Objective perspective: Your nonprofit’s team is very familiar with your mission and current fundraising activities, which can make it difficult to try new approaches. A fundraising consultant mitigates this problem by approaching your nonprofit’s fundraising strategy and activities from an unbiased outside perspective.

• Custom strategies and planning: A fundraising consultant creates and pitches strategies and plans tailored to your organization’s specific needs and challenges.

• Time and resource management: As a nonprofit professional, determining priorities can be difficult and even lead to problems burnout. A consultant can provide structure by determining where you spend your time and resources.

• Training and capacity building: Consultants can help your nonprofit team members take their fundraising skills to the next level by providing training. A consultant can also provide advice on building your nonprofit’s fundraising capacity, which can also lead to increased revenue and greater future sustainability of funding.

• Greater fundraising success: The biggest takeaway from all the above benefits is that a fundraising consultant can help you raise more money for your mission. An experienced advisor will also lay the foundation for future fundraising, even after your association with them has ended.

When hiring a fundraising consultant, determine early on whether you are looking for a generalist or a specialist. A generalist will provide broad fundraising services applicable to many types of nonprofits, while a specialist focuses on a single subset of fundraising or a specific nonprofit sector. For example, if you run an association, you may want to work with a consultant who specializes in helping associations with everything from selecting the right software solution to determine the best ways to increase non-contribution revenue.

Tips for building a strong partnership

1. Define clear goals and roles early

Before you start work, make sure your nonprofit and your advisor agree on specific, measurable objectives that you will use to evaluate the success of the engagement. Clear communication and defined expectations prevent scope creep and ensure that both parties are strictly on the same page regarding the desired end result.

Here are some best practices for doing this:

• Choose Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): While your ultimate indicator of success is the amount raised, you’ll need to track other KPIs to measure how you’re reaching your goal. Statistics such as funder retention rate and increase in average gift size can reveal the impact your consultant has on your fundraising program.
• Set benchmarks: Define what success looks like after 30, 60 and 90 days. These could be specific metrics such as “25 interviews completed with potential funders” or “10 major gift requests.”
• Clarify responsibilities: Determine exactly what the consultant will handle and what will be left on your team’s plate. You also want to be clear about who has final approval for particular deliverables or project phases. For example, if your consultant rewrites your appeal letter, do your board members have to approve it?
• Make agreements about the communication cadence: Decide early on how often you will meet and in what format (e.g., virtually, in-person, etc.). Establishing a cadence can help your nonprofit stay engaged with the consultant’s work and help the consultant understand how your team has progressed through the collaboration.

For example, let’s say you hire a consultant to help you conduct one feasibility study. Rather than simply setting a deadline for the final report, agree on milestones for each step of the project. This may include setting deadlines for reworking your support application, conducting your internal audit, and finalizing your interview list.

2. Treat them as a team member

The best results are achieved when a consultant is fully integrated into your mission. Treat them as part of your team rather than as an outsider by inviting them to relevant staff meetings or program events so they can see your impact firsthand. Give them access to your prospect data and fundraising data so they truly understand the full picture of your nonprofit.

Aim to be transparent as well. Be honest about your organization’s financial situation, board involvement and past fundraising failures. By embedding them in your culture and sharing the plain truth, you empower them to provide honest feedback (such as a feasibility study that shows you’re not ready for a campaign), saving you from burnout and missed goals.

For example, let’s say your nonprofit wants to do this OneCause’s advice by hosting a silent auction and needs a fundraising consultant to help you plan the largest event you’ve held yet. If you have previously hosted successful auctions, please provide plans for those events as well as your marketing and marketing activities storytelling strategy for attractive invitations. If your previous events had less than stellar results, you can provide your consultant with these details as well. This information will help your advisor make your event the best it can be, while fostering a stronger partnership between your two parties.

3. Plan for long-term sustainability

While there are many benefits to working with a consultant, it is wise to have a knowledge transfer plan in place so that you can continue to benefit from your partnership even after your assignment has ended. Make sure your consultant documents processes, trains staff and sets up systems that will remain effective in the long term. The goal is for your team to inherit a robust fundraising machine, not a void when the advisor leaves.

As your involvement winds down, your nonprofit may also want to reconsider the scope of your partnership, depending on the status of your fundraising strategy. For example, if you has hired a capital campaign consultant To oversee your feasibility study, you may decide that you want the consultant to stay on for the entire campaign. Or you can choose to pay a retainer to ensure long-term support in the form of strategic coaching.

Remember, fundraising is a marathon, not a sprint. While a consultant can accelerate your progress, sustainable growth takes time and patience. The most successful partnerships are those where the organization uses the consultant to build a sustainable culture of philanthropy, not just to meet a fiscal year revenue target. Trust the process, celebrate the small wins along the way, and view your consultant as a mentor invested in your organization’s long-term resilience.

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