The Elephant in the Room: A Consultant’s Project Fee
It’s not a fun topic to discuss; it’s the elephant in the room in most business development meetings. But we thought we’d tackle it head-on and utilize this blog post to introduce those sometimes overlooked sections of a proposal—the explanation of the proposed fee and the case for how a good consultant is worth the investment when you’re ready.
Our team puts a lot of time and thought into customizing proposals for prospective clients. We know however, that the proposal is sometimes skimmed with an eye only for the price tag, thus missing the essence and rationale for our proposed course of action. This is not to say that the price tag isn’t important - it is! But we believe it should be understood in a wider context of approach, expertise, and plan. So, without further ado...
What goes into a project fee?
The time spent to get acquainted with your organization. In order to accomplish your desired goals, a good consultant must get up to speed on your operations and programming. At Brightspot, we devote time to review your strategic plan, development plan, website, marketing materials, past grants and other relevant information. In many instances, we interview staff, program participants, and board members to round out our understanding of your organization.
The work. The most obvious element of any project fee is the time required to complete the actual work, whether that be a grant, development plan, planning for a facilitation, a visioning workshop, strategic plan, or launching a campaign project. Over our many years of consulting, we have honed in on the ranges of time required to complete a project and base our project rates accordingly.
Dedicated access to our expertise. Each proposal fee accounts for the time we set aside to be available to your organization during the course of our engagement. This includes the time associated with reviewing and crafting emails, phone conversations, and/or responding to unforeseen opportunities and challenges.
Access to a think-tank. Unique to firms like Brightspot is the involvement of other partners in your project. At our weekly staff meetings, we discuss every single client, share ideas regarding your project, navigate challenges, and ensure that we are on track to provide you with the highest quality of deliverables. We also call upon colleagues, peers, and professional networks to provide input and expertise if needed.
Cost-share of resources. Depending on your scope of work, fees for access to our tools such as wealth screenings or foundation databases are incorporated into the project fee at a mere fraction of the cost that your organization would otherwise pay full-price for.
Ancillary costs such as printing, copying, ink, postage, other relevant supplies, and mileage necessary to complete the project.
So how exactly will a consultant help your organization?
You don’t know what you don’t know. A good consultant brings to your organization years of experience around a specific strategy or set of strategies (ie: campaigns, board development, grant writing). As such, they are able to leverage their experience with other clients to create a time-tested and meaningful plan that will move your organization forward. Experienced consultants have also likely seen your challenge before (or something like it) and are able to come up to speed quickly and develop instincts to guide you forward.
Consultants add capacity. Many nonprofits are under-staffed and overburdened. Consultants can be an effective short-term option to amplify your internal capacity without the headaches of payroll taxes, benefits, and even management. Because consultants are less likely to be impacted by the distractions of day-to-day operations, they are liberated to focus solely on the targeted scope of work meaning you’ll finally be able to check that project off your to-do list!
An outside and unbiased perspective is a powerful tool to identify your organization’s blind spots, or to build consensus and comradery. Bonus: even when the stated scope of work is narrow, consultants can’t help but bring their experiences to bear and will share their counsel and suggestions even when they fall outside of the scope of work. You may hire a consultant to conduct a strategic plan - but if your founder is transitioning, might that also be a fundraising opportunity? Consultants can often open these doors of thought for organizations and their leaders.
Access to resources. Good consultants have access to a plethora of (sometimes pricey) databases, subscriptions, and networks and know how to efficiently and effectively utilize these resources to support your project.
As you can see, a good consultant delivers much more than a grant, a strategic plan, or board document. To every project they also bring a set of tools, resources, facilitation skills, and sometimes partners, all of which promote real and lasting enhancements so that organizations can focus more intently on their missions. So, while a project fee may be uncomfortable to discuss or absorb, a shift in perspective to weigh the costs of not using outside support against the price tag of moving forward with a consultant may help clarify your direction.