It’s Not Right for Fund Raiser to Cast Aspersions on All Consultants

To the Editor:

Hold it one minute, Richard J. Gerber (“Consultants: the Cause of Problems,” Letters to the Editor, August 26). So it sounds like in your 25-plus years as an in-house fund raiser, you’ve run across some consultants who didn’t represent themselves appropriately.

But, I’m a grants consultant, and I don’t necessarily live “far away” from my clients, and I’m definitely not out of work. So please don’t lump me in with your narrow, obviously based-on-your-bad-experience definition of a consultant.

Don’t get me wrong — not every consultant is ethical, and not all consultants represent themselves for what they truly are. I think, however, that there are ways of finding reputable consultants. And I would suggest the following:

* Check if the consultant is a member of a professional organization that promotes ethical fund-raising practices, such as the National Society of Fund Raising Executives or the Association of Philanthropic Counsel.

* Ask people in your network of non-profit colleagues if they have worked with any consultants — and, if they have, if they were satisfied with them.

* Ask for references from a consultant and call those references. Ask tough questions about the consultant’s experience or raise specific issues if you have them.

* Ask a consultant whom you trust to recommend colleagues for you to contact.

If I were running a non-profit agency — and I have during my 15-plus years in development — I would hesitate to hire a consultant who was not willing to work with and acknowledge the expertise of in-house staff. After all, the consultant leaves at the end of the contract, while the in-house staff stays on to carry out the responsibilities of their positions.

One final comment. I notice there was no organization listed under Mr. Gerber’s name, though the title “Fund Raiser” is. I can only hope that he’s working for an organization he just didn’t identify and is not out of work — or he might just be tempted to try consulting.

Deborah L. Ward
Grants Consultant
Ward and Associates
Lancaster, Pa.

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To the Editor:

As a consultant for the past eight years and as a former director of a non-profit group that had many successful experiences with consultants, I find Richard Gerber’s views quite perplexing. The key, I have found, is to have a client that wants the consultant’s presence and input.

In the area of fund raising, the chair of the board or the executive director often will hire a consultant to work with the development director, but an inside staff person will then decide it is his or her mission to sabotage the consultant in hopes of increasing his or her own power base. My suggestion to all organizations is to have a dual reporting for employees — not only to the appropriate-level staff person, but also to a person one level up. Unfortunately, fear of consultants is the very ingredient that can prevent a positive outcome.

Consultants typically can be quite valuable to non-profit groups. They can elicit information from board members and get completely different fund-raising results than the executive director or the fund raiser on staff. Consultants also can help when a client feels “stuck” in one phase of an implementation plan. And, at the end of a successful campaign, consultants can help assess the infrastructure of an organization and its options for moving to the next idea.

To be sure, a consultant’s fee is usually problematic for staff members. It is crucial that board leaders or the executive director explain the industry standards and provide cost analysis to an organization’s staff. If leadership does not prepare staff members, they will undoubtedly cause trouble behind the scenes.

The negative, narrow-minded ending to Mr. Gerber’s letter — that a consultant is “someone who lives far away and is out of work” — also is misguided. Consultants like myself frequently are offered jobs on a permanent basis by our clients — in some cases to succeed the existing management — but usually turn them down. Instead, most consultants prefer to think of themselves as mentors, turnaround specialists, mind openers, trainers, facilitators, and overall support to help articulate, implement, and achieve the goals of the organization’s leadership. To imply that they are no more than criminals is a disservice to your readers and to the consultants who generally deliver much more added value to organizations than the amount of their billings.

Allison Sampson
Consultant
Santa Monica, Cal.

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To the Editor:

Richard Gerber undermines his primary premise in his own letter. While he claims that in-house fund-raising staff members are most cost-effective, the example he so proudly cites came in under budget “five years later.”

Judging by the budget amounts he listed, I estimate that this was a campaign with a goal between $1-million and $10-million. Most outside counsel would secure this in well less than a year. Even with multiple-year payments, organizations with good counsel could have received full payment and completed a second successful campaign within five years.

Furthermore, Mr. Gerber’s assumption that in-house staff can secure the same levels of funding as outside counsel is dubious. While he may be correct in some instances, successful providers of campaign services generally do raise more money. Usually, this reflects greater experience, specialized skills, and the ability to focus on the campaign without worrying about the golf tournament, the year-end mailer, and whatever else the board expects from the staff regardless of the campaign.

There is another reason that counsel can be more effective than staff, and I empathize with Mr. Gerber’s frustration with this issue. Sometimes a board just wants the reassurance of an “outside expert.” I know there are times when the consultant is not saying anything new or different than staff has said for years. However, if leadership does not have enough confidence in the staff to proceed, the campaign will never get off the ground. Compared with no campaign at all, the cost of counsel becomes negligible.

Robert R. Dalton
Senior Vice-President
National Community Development Services
Atlanta

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To the Editor:

Richard Gerber is right: Too often, in-house talent and experience is ignored while “strangers” are hired to conduct studies and guide campaigns. Certainly, beware of consultants whose salaries and expenses are out of line.

But good consultants, when they’re local and know the players, can help in-house staff plan and execute campaigns, especially in small shops where staff is limited or inexperienced.

Like Mr. Gerber, I’ve always been a firm believer in hiring full-time fund-raising staff and paying them well — the “you pay peanuts, you get monkeys” theory is certainly true in our field. The bottom line is to be diligent before you hire consultants; be sure the chemistry feels right; and set realistic, measurable checkpoints for their work.

But don’t cast aspersions at all of them.

Barbara Gross
Director
Menorah Park Foundation
Beachwood, Ohio