Moonlighting Can Sharpen Skills and Raise Enthusiasm, Say Fund Raisers

For John H. Taylor, moonlighting as a consultant while maintaining a full-time job has been a

way to have the best of both worlds.

Mr. Taylor, who specializes in helping fund-raising departments keep track of donor and gift information and streamline their operations, says he toyed with the notion of becoming a full-time consultant, but chose not to because he feared he would have to spend too much time traveling or marketing his business.

Mr. Taylor was director of alumni and development records at Duke University for 14 years; last week he became vice president for research and data services at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, in Washington. He says he expects to put part-time consulting on hold while he gets settled in the new job and if he does resume moonlighting, he says, he would not work for organizations that are council members.

Mr. Taylor says working full time for a nonprofit group has been a great benefit to his consulting business.

His daily work at Duke helped him keep current with the latest technology for managing fund-raising data, changes in Internal Revenue Service regulations, and many other topics that affect how fund-raising offices are managed.

Freelancing, he says, also allows him to approach his full-time position with fresh enthusiasm. “After 15 years in one job, there is not much you can really sink your teeth into, so doing the consulting helps you get energized and see new ways of doing things,” says Mr. Taylor. “It got my creative juices flowing.”

New Perspectives

While it’s difficult to measure how many fund raisers consult on a part-time basis, many consultants, fund raisers, and charity leaders think it is becoming more common, particularly among university fund raisers.

University fund-raising departments tend to be larger and more sophisticated than those at other nonprofit groups, and the development operations have a lot in common, says Charles Collier, senior philanthropic adviser at Harvard University, who also consults in his spare time. As a result, university fund raisers often have specialized knowledge that other universities seek, he says.

“They feel they will be better served than calling one of the big consulting firms, because the big ones — as good as they are — tend to be generalists,” Mr. Collier says, “and they typically don’t have real expertise in planned giving, or corporations and foundations, or information technology in-house.” In addition, he says, freelancers usually charge on a pay-as-you-go basis, unlike large consulting companies, which may require a longer-term, potentially more expensive contract.

Suzanne Mink, vice president of development at the World Wildlife Fund, in Washington, who hired Mr. Taylor for his first consulting job when she worked at Drew University, says she would also allow her own staff members to consult because she thinks it develops their analytical skills, also reenergizing them in their regular jobs.

“When people get out, they see their own institution from a different perspective and get more creative about it,” says Ms. Mink. “You run the risk of becoming quite myopic when you look at the same four walls and the same situation every day.”

Bob Shepard, vice president of development at Duke, and Mr. Taylor’s boss until recently, says that, while only a relatively small number of employees have the experience needed to be an effective consultant, he is happy to let staff members do consulting, and to negotiate such arrangements on a case-by-case basis.

“Development has always been a profession of sharing best ideas and best practices, and the extent to which we here at Duke have expertise in certain areas and certain fields, it’s a plus for Duke and it’s a plus for the profession,” Mr. Shepard says. “In that sense, I think it’s a no-brainer to permit good employees like John, within the limits set up, an opportunity to share his relevant experience and expertise, and hopefully to gain something from others.”

Some charities, however, discourage the practice. David Brown, executive vice president at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, in Washington, says that while his organization does not forbid employees from moonlighting as fund-raising consultants, it does not promote it either. The trust reviews requests to freelance on a case-by-case basis and prohibits employees from consulting with other historic-preservation groups. “We are concerned about conflict-of-interest issues,” he says, “and for someone who is working full time, we would want them focused on the work at the trust.”

Falling Into a Job

Mr. Taylor says he started consulting on a part-time basis in the mid-1990s, when he fell into it by accident. At the time, he had developed a national reputation for overseeing a successful “back office” operation for Duke’s fund-raising department: The office was known for its quick turnaround time in processing and acknowledging gifts. As a result, he was frequently invited to speak at professional meetings. He had also become well-known as the founder of a popular electronic mailing list about the administrative and technological aspects of fund raising.

It was that professional reputation that led Ms. Mink, then chief fund raiser at Drew University, to ask if he had ever done any consulting for other universities. “And I said, ‘No, but I am willing to start,’” he recalls.

In the years since Drew University became his first client, he has worked with at least 75 other groups, including many universities and other charities, such as the Special Olympics, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. Typically, Mr. Taylor is called in to conduct a review of how a charity manages its fund-raising records, or to guide it through the process of transferring records from one software system to another. In an average month, Mr. Taylor spends from four to six days consulting, usually using two days of vacation time and doing the rest of the work at night or on weekends.

He says he enjoys consulting because it gives him great satisfaction to help other organizations solve problems. “Sometimes you identify a problem that an institution didn’t even realize that it had,” he observes. “It’s like this ‘Eureka!’ moment. Once you have developed a good process and program at your own institution, the opportunities for the ‘Eurekas’ go away, so that is energizing and exciting.” It’s for the same reason, he says, that he serves on the boards of several charities in his hometown of Durham, N.C., where he will continue to work some of the time from his home office for CASE, which has its headquarters in Washington.

He also finds consulting reassuring, he says, because visiting other nonprofit groups reminded him that his own organization was in good shape: “It makes you think, ‘Darn, we really do things well at Duke,’ because you see how badly they could be done.”

But his clients also helped him find new ideas that he was able to bring back to Duke. It was a client, he says, who showed him how to use credit bureaus to help locate up-to-date contact information for alumni. That kernel of information led him to explore other methods of tracking down alumni who were missing from Duke’s records. As a result, Mr. Taylor helped to reduce the university’s “lost alumni” rate from 15 percent to 4 percent.

Tips for Freelancers

For fund raisers who are thinking about consulting on a part-time basis, Mr. Taylor offers the following advice:

Talk to the boss. “Without a supportive boss, it is not going to work,” he says. He advises employees who only consult during vacation or personal time that they should still inform their supervisor, because they will often be seen as a representative of their institution, even if they are not acting in an official capacity. They also should discuss any potential conflicts of interest, and how any such problems would be dealt with. Mr. Taylor recommends negotiating a written agreement affirming that an employee’s full-time job comes first, spelling out how many days the employee will consult, and discussing any other ethical or logistical issues.

Keep a detailed calendar. Mr. Taylor fills out his work calendar a year in advance, noting any critical dates at his regular job. As a rule, he never does consulting work from June 15 to July 15, the end of Duke’s fiscal year, or from December 15 to January 15, the time when many year-end gifts need to be handled.

Get family support. Adding consulting to the mix of a regular job and family obligations can be difficult, he says, and if a fund raiser’s family does not fully endorse his or her moonlighting, that can make it even tougher. “The good consultants who work full time and also consult have to have been in the circus,” he says. “They need to know how to juggle, and plan their time accordingly.”

Learn to live without client feedback. At first, Mr. Taylor says, he found it frustrating when he never heard back from a client after he submitted his final recommendations. “If you are the kind of person that needs instant gratification, you may not get that in consulting,” he says. “You hear about things when they go bad, you don’t hear about things when they are good.”