August 9, 2011 | Read Time: 1 minute
Consultants are a huge and growing part of the nonprofit landscape.
By 2018, some 1.8 million consultants will be at work in the United States—up 83 percent in a decade, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts. Even if just a small share of them work with nonprofits, that’s a lot of new consultants.
But the real question is whether those consultants will do a good job.
After all, the barrier for entry is quite low. You don’t need to do much to call yourself a consultant.
No universal standards govern our work. It is not a profession in the same sense as law and medicine because there is no formal body of knowledge to study, no board or bar exam to pass.
Of the many books available on consulting, few have been written specifically for those who work with nonprofits. Even consultants themselves, preoccupied with the concerns of their clients, rarely reflect upon their roles.
So today we start this blog to fill the void by offering advice from consultants to consultants.
We’ve enlisted a team of respected consultants as authors, and we’ll also invite nonprofit leaders to share their experiences working with consultants. And we hope you’ll help us shape the conversation by letting us know what you’d like to see explored here.
