The Art of Relationships

Some expressions still have traction after a couple of hundred years, case in point: the old English aphorism of “Penny wise and pound foolish.” It’s applicable to a trend I’m seeing in today’s nonprofits of eliminating development staff and replacing it with consultants.

Certainly there are aspects of fundraising work that can be done just as well (and sometimes even better) by consultants. Grantwriting is one of those things. There is so much art and science that goes into good grantwriting, that hiring that expertise on an as-needed basis, as opposed to relying on a development staff person who does grantwriting as one of many other functions, can prove to be a very wise investment.

Event planning and execution is another function that can be outsourced to an events specialist. Anyone who has run an event knows the complexity of pulling one off successfully, has weathered the stress and strain and all-consuming nature. So, why not hire that event specialist who actually loves doing this work?

I’d even go so far as to say that with the right consultant, you might even be able to successfully offer up a true annual appeal (if you still actually do just a once-a-year appeal?). But with these consultants, as with any consultant that you use in your organization, there must be someone in the organization, on staff, who is managing that consultant, making sure that the consultant is doing what the organization wants and needs and not what the consultant wants. Make sure you calculate the managerial time in determining the true costs of outsourcing your development functions, as your thinking that doing so will save the organization money is likely not to be the case. But the same amount of money may well buy you a level of expertise (and supervision of that expertise) that you couldn’t bring on staff.

And absolutely hire the experts to do your feasibility study. The odds of that skill set being present in even the largest of development offices is quite slim. And that is as it should be, as it is skill set that you need rarely, so why pay for it on a daily basis?

But there is, however, one area where hiring a consultant to do your development work is not only not penny wise, it is incredibly pound foolish; that area is major giving. If you know nothing about major giving, you should know that major giving is built on relationships, and you can’t outsource relationships.

The difference between major giving staff and consultants doing your major giving is like the difference between teaching and training. Teaching, classically defined, is “to cause to know something, to guide the studies of, to impart knowledge or to instruct by example, precept or experience.” Training, on the other hand, is defined as “to form by instruction, discipline or drill; to make prepared for a test or skill.” The former suggests the art that is involved in teaching, that must, naturally, come with a highly developed science; the latter suggests that which is mechanistic, and lacking in art. Now, having had a few relationships over the decades of my life, I know that relationships require a tremendous amount of art and that no relationship survives on auto pilot or rote interactions. Relationships are customized, cultivated over time, and require an unwavering loyalty if you want them to survive.

In my own practice as a consultant, there are some missions for which I categorically will never work; and I can honestly say I am not passionate about the missions of most of my clients. To give that some context: I recognize their missions as important for society and, thus, I want to offer whatever assistance I can to help them be able to maximize their missions; but I don’t have the “want to serve on your board” passion for their missions. Thus, I don’t have what it would take to be a good relationship steward for those organizations. In other words, I wouldn’t want me as their major gift consultant! Maybe those who go into major gift consulting can fake it better than I! But staff don’t have to fake it; staff of nonprofits chose their jobs to match their passions.

The idea that consultants could do staff work as well as, if not better, than a devoted staff member while saving the organization money is a classic for-profit strategy–and one that doesn’t work, in this instance, in our sector.

Maybe the first half of this statement can work in their world: maybe a consultant can figure out how to improve the market reach as well as if not better than a staff member. And maybe the staff member is so overpaid that hiring a consultant does save money. But in the nonprofit sector it doesn’t work that way: a consultant cannot bring the passion, commitment and, most important when it comes to major giving, the deep understanding of that mission that comes from working in the organization rather than merely for the organization. And given how poorly most major gift staff is paid, hiring any major gift consultant worth his/her salt would not save any money. Add in what you will lose in missed gifts, not only has money not been saved, it has been lost. Not a very savvy strategy.