When Should You Hire a Consultant?

Consultants can fill gaps, but knowing when to hire matters.

Consultants can be vital partners in the work of advancing your organization’s mission and expanding its impact. They can provide a unique skill set, fill capacity gaps, offer valuable external perspective, and more. The best consultants maintain a delicate balance, becoming a vital member of your team while maintaining their objectivity. They care about your mission but are not wedded to the structures and processes currently in place to advance it. In this article, we’ll consider some typical situations in which it may make sense to look beyond your own team for support. 

You’re Looking for a Unique Skill Set

There are a number of key skills that nonprofits tend to need on an ad hoc basis. For example, strategic planning, rebranding, and internal reorganization are “one-off” initiatives that you’re not likely to engage in every year. It doesn’t make sense to create an in-house position to meet the need, but the existing team doesn’t have the bandwidth, expertise, and/or perspective to do the work. What you really need is someone who does this type of work all the time—someone who has developed a proven approach, knows the potential pitfalls, and can guide your staff and board through the process. 

Staff and board training is another good example of needing a unique skill set. There’s no question that training is important, but it involves a specific expertise honed over time. And unless you are a large nonprofit training hundreds of staff members, you are not likely to require a full-time professional on staff. In this case, it makes sense to build a relationship with a trainer or coach who can meet your organization’s training needs on a recurring basis. 

When you hire a consultant to fill the need for a unique skill set, it’s important to know from the beginning how your team will interact with that consultant, benefit from their work, and carry that work forward. For instance, while a consultant can help you develop a clear strategic plan, your staff should take responsibility for the actual work of achieving the goals of the plan. Similarly, a consultant can help you plan out a smart re-org, but your leadership team will have to manage the operational details — moving people to new roles, implementing new performance evaluation processes, etc. — often with ongoing coaching from your consultant.

You Need To Fill a Short-Term Capacity Gap

Let’s say your Director of Marketing and Communications has taken an unexpected, indefinite leave. While you’re not sure how long they’ll be out, you’re fairly certain of an eventual return. You could redistribute that workload to the rest of the team—if there is one—but you then run the risk of overloading people who are already stretched thin. 

When you hire a consultant to fill a capacity cap like this, you need someone who will keep the trains running on time. In this example, you would want a seasoned fractional (also known as “interim”) marketing and communications professional who can get up to speed on your organization’s internal operations quickly. Ideally, they are interested in and willing to implement someone else’s plans and processes, but they also have the experience and grace to be able to recommend opportunities for improvement along the way. 

There are many fractional consultants available to fill a variety of roles. They tend to be experts in their fields, and they have stepped into similar situations before. They can get up to speed quickly, seamlessly integrate with your team, and operate efficiently. Don’t be scared off by what might be a slightly higher price tag for a fractional team member. When you consider the efficiencies—and the fact that you’re not paying them benefits—you might find that they provide equal or higher value!

Alternatively, sometimes you just need an extra set of hands to help get through a busy time of year. Maybe you need some administrative support to complete your audit on time, or you realize that an extra writer would really help you make the deadline for your quarterly magazine. A consultant can take some of the load off your team and help get you to the finish line — quickly and well. 

[A quick note on these sorts of situations. Sometimes you just can’t hire a consultant—perhaps it’s not in the budget, there’s no one available to jump on board with such short notice, or it’s too short a period of time to get someone up to speed. At that point, you’ll need to be very intentional about what absolutely has to get done, and what can wait. What can the rest of the team move off their plate to help cover the “must do’s”?]

You Need a Fresh, Objective Perspective

In any organization, it’s all too easy to fall into the “we’ve always done it this way” trap. Having worked with a variety of organizations, consultants can (graciously) help your team take a broader view of current structures and processes. They can present options you may not have considered and share lessons learned from other organizations facing similar choices and challenges. They have no emotional attachment to that board member who’s been around for 20 years but is out of touch with your organization’s current realities. They can respect your history and present but should not be afraid to recommend future paths that may look very different. 

There are also places where best practices and/or potential conflicts of interest require use of an external consultant. For instance, an external firm with no potential for conflict of interest with any member of your board or staff must conduct the yearly financial audit. Perhaps members of your leadership team would benefit from 1:1 or group coaching. An impartial professional coach will know how to create an open, honest environment that serves the needs of each individual and of the organization alike. 

Consultants can also play a vital role in advancing a vision or strategic approach that may be uncomfortable for members of your staff and board. As the saying goes, “It’s tough to be a prophet in your own land.” For instance, perhaps your team has been raising an idea with your board for some time now, to no avail. Think about how your consultant can suggest that idea in the context of their work and you may find the board to be more receptive. While that may feel discouraging in the short term, take a deep breath, know that the consultant will tell you you’re brilliant for thinking of it, and embrace the win!

Here’s a quick set of questions to ask yourself the next time you consider hiring a consultant: 

• Is there an individual or team in-house that has the time to take on this work (now and for the future)? If not, how could we intentionally adjust priorities and workloads so that someone could take it on? 
• Do we have the skill set in-house? If not, is this something we’re going to be doing regularly enough to justify hiring someone on staff to do it? 
• Would this body of work require or benefit from an outside perspective?