A (3:39)

Welcome to the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast with Rob Harder. I'm Lena Larew, based currently in Mexico, and I'm a listener just like you who cares about the nonprofit world and the people leading it. If you're looking to learn and grow as a nonprofit leader, you're in the right place. Thanks for listening. Now here's Rob.

B (3:59)

This podcast is sponsored by DonorBox. DonorBox. Helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business. Well, welcome back everybody, to the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. I've got a guest that I had on my show a couple years ago, but Julie, it's great to have you back because you have some updates on particularly the world of nonprofit consultants. And I think you and I were just talking before we hit record. You know, this is a world that is growing and growing and I feel like, particularly after Covid, we've sort of seen this large increase more and more people going into fractional work or consulting work. But I do feel like it's a trend. And so I'm really glad you're here to talk about that because I think either for my listeners who are still full time in a nonprofit organization who rely on consultants, or those who may be thinking about it, or maybe they've taken the jump, so to speak, and now they are a consultant. They want to know what are the trends out there? What are you seeing? Because you and your partner Catalina are doing some really interesting work analyzing, understanding better and kind of giving us a sense of what is going, going on in the nonprofit world when it comes to consultants. So, again, great to have you on the show back.

A (5:04)

Thank you, Rob, so much for having me.

B (5:06)

Absolutely. Let's start with what caused you and Catalina to really start this study. What prompted you to want to do a little bit more research on this?

A (5:15)

Yeah. So we've been working in the nonprofit sector since we got out of college. I think I shared last time on the podcast, you know, when I got into nonprofit work, it was as an intern, as a grant writer while I was in school. And Catalina did a similar thing. She became a digital communications director. And we moved up through those paths to nonprofits. We started consulting in 2021, like a lot of people, and that sort of COVID shift after 2020, 21, when people didn't want to go back to the office and we're looking at more flexible options. And then in the last two years, we've been working specifically with nonprofit consultants themselves because we found from talking to people in our networks and people who are trying to learn from us, how did you build this business? How did you leave your jobs? That there was a big gap there and not a whole lot of structure behind how kind of business we were talking about at the time. So for the last two years, we've been working exclusively with nonprofit consultants, nonprofit professionals building these businesses as solo preneurs mostly, but some agencies. And the big question that we get when we work with our members is what are the benchmarks? What are people charging? How much can you make doing this? What kind of niche or positioning? Where should I specialize? And we did not have a whole lot of data. It was very anecdotal, just. But people heard from their networks. And so we had a pretty big Instagram following. We have a pretty big email list, about 4,000 people. And we have a lot of people on LinkedIn as well. So we said, what if we just put together literally a type form online? We share this. It was about 40 questions. And we said, let's just send it out. We launched it just after Thanksgiving 25 and it ran for about six weeks. And the results that we got back were 381 nonprofit consultants responded, which we were blown away by.

B (6:55)

Wow. Wow, that's impressive.

A (6:58)

And over a six week period. And the results were phenomenal. So now we put it together. The whole report is 102 pages and it's breaking down everything that you would want to know about how, what people are seeing as they're running these businesses, what they're making, what they're charging, what they're offering. Really just behind the scenes stuff that no one knew before. So we really do believe this is the most comprehensive report out there right now on nonprofit consulting.

B (7:26)

Well, thank you for giving the background a little bit and thank you for providing this because me being a nonprofit consultant, seeing the project first of all, and the overall just professionalism and you go into quite depth about different data points that you found. And so I think it's always good when you have a comprehensive report as opposed to just anecdotal things here and there. A one pager, two pager. This is very thorough. So let's dive into some of the details of your report. A lot of things that I'm talking about with people on my show. A lot of nonprofit leaders as we're just, you know, get together on a regular basis. There's definitely been changes to a lot of nonprofits because of federal funding cuts. There's been grant cycles that are changing and even the amount of people giving through grants are changing, sadly, mostly going down. There's been compliance issues, there's been costs. These are all reshaping nonprofits at some level and obviously impacting in the nonprofit consultancy world. Tell me about how these trends are changing, how nonprofits plan, hire and deliver programs as they look towards this year.

A (8:23)

Yeah, we've been hearing a lot from people in our network. Some people, they come and they join our program saying, I'm looking for an exit strategy over the next two years. I might be retiring. Some people are saying, hey listen, we just found out that our grant, our major grant for this program is being cut 18 months from now. And they're kind of giving us like they're waving the flag that in 18 months from now this program's getting shut down. So I have people being proactive and joining in that way and saying, this is something I've been thinking about. I want to stay in the sector, but I don't want to go and try to apply for jobs right now. Everyone's applying for jobs right now. So we're hearing that. We're also hearing some more unfortunate situations where I've had conversations with people. They were brought on a group zoom call and they were all let go. And that happened once with regional offices for, you know, larger nonprofits, their, their Arizona division, their, you know, whatever, their, their state level divisions. And they're just told, hey, you're all let go right now. Budget cuts. So we are hearing that and that's obviously a very concerning trend. What we talked about two years ago, I remember, is like, why become a nonprofit consultant? And people bring up, you know, when you could be a full time employee. And I think what we're seeing more and more is that the nonprofits just simply cannot sustain the overhead required to have full time employees at this level. So maybe they're having a leaner team, a leaner core team, but they cannot have a three or four person marketing team. They can't have a three or four person development team. They have to really figure out where that full time staffing is going, that money's going to go. And so a lot of people are being cut now. We don't want that talent to leave the sector. That's where the real issue is. The bleed is that people are like, you know what? I can't get a job in the sector anymore. I've been in it for 15 years. What we're seeing is this creative kind of solution where people are saying, well, I have the talent, I have the skills, I know how to do these things. They can't afford me full time, but maybe they could afford me on this consulting contractual basis where I'm providing a specific service that fulfills a specific need and it's working.

B (10:23)

Okay, so it sounds like, here's one other piece of that then. If people are getting laid off. And I've heard these same stories of just, you know, large layoffs, particularly those who dependent on a lot of those federal cuts or just for whatever reason, the grants that they were depending on have been sliced by 40% or sometimes, you know, even 50%. Have you also found the people that stay so say they had a marketing department of four. Now there's one. Now you've got four times the work for one person. Are you seeing now increased burnout? Because now the pressure's on that one person who actually survived the cuts. Are you seeing that? And what are people doing to survive that?

A (10:55)

Yeah, and those people are looking for an out or for a solution as well, because it's not sustainable. And you have, you know, the grantees or the, the grant makers want increased reporting, they want to see more transparency. You still have a big lag in the nonprofit sector tech wise, where things are really moving forward and you really need to get up to speed with like updated technology, updated tech stacks, CRMs, donor database kinds of things, websites, and not having that in house support anymore. It's like harder than ever to try to be catching up where they were. You know, historically, nonprofits are a little slower on the uptake to now. That's all down to one person. So they're also being expected to deliver more services, the social services particularly. And they just don't have the support they need in house. So it is a big issue. Obviously it's a very resilient sector and people are looking for other avenues. And that's where I think there is actually a lot of opportunity today. And what we found in the study, which is my, probably my favorite stat in the study, was that 83% of the consultants surveyed found that demand for their services was stable or increasing. So nonprofits are still looking to solve their problems. They're just looking for other avenues. And it may not be hiring full time staff.

B (12:08)

Okay, that's fascinating. Okay, so they're still looking to basically solve their issue, whatever marketing or development, but they want to come up with creative solutions where they're not maybe providing overhead, they're able just to pay someone maybe an hourly rate or for a certain amount of hours. Okay, within that, are there specialized skills that you've seen over and over again that nonprofit social impact organizations are particularly looking for? Is it fundraising, is it marketing, is it programming? What are you seeing as some of the key specialized skills that people most are looking for?

A (12:38)

It's everything definitely across the board. And one of the biggest, biggest myths that were busted was busted by this survey that we did. You know, the number one question I get from consultants is, well, what should I specialize in? Because you know, nonprofit people, we wear all the hats. I've done, I've done marketing, I've done development, I've been an executive director, I've done it all. I can do anything. What do I offer? What a nonprofits want? And we, you know, we did a lot of correlation analysis in the study and we did not find any correlation in like earnings and a specific niche. So the fundraisers are not necessarily earning more, the marketing people are not necessarily earning more, the strategic planners, no one's necessarily earning more or less based on what they're offering. Demand is up for all of it across the board, it's more an issue of how the consultants are positioning themselves to solve and address specific problems where there's a gap with the non within the nonprofit.

B (13:28)

Okay. Oh, that's interesting. Okay. And then what are you seeing in terms of those specialized. It sounds like you're getting again, people kind of need all of it. Are you seeing amount of hours? Is there a trend where people are saying, hey, we want you 3/4 times or we just want you 20% of the time? Or maybe it's a part time kind of percentage, somewhere between 10 to 15 hours a week. Like what are you seeing in terms of the typical amount of time people are willing to pay for a consultant?

A (13:53)

Yeah, so we didn't pull from that side because that's more looking at what the nonprofits want. But we did find some interesting information. Part time versus full time consulting. So people are doing part time, obviously they're making a lot less. They're doing about on Average, you know, 12,000 a year is what they're making. These are people who are doing it as a side gig. Maybe a friend asked them a referral, they did a little training or whatever. But the people that are working full time, they're saying that they're working upwards of 25 hours a week and they're making on average 87,000. And that was, you know, a huge range. It went up to half a million. I saw some of the agencies people were making, but the biggest thing that we found were that the most successful relationships from the consultant side were retainers and larger priced projects. So you would figure it's not so much these little small engagements, but people who had 50% or more of their income was on retainers. So I'm imagining, and we talked a little bit, there's that fractional aspect, which is a specific kind of consulting relationship. But we're seeing people coming in, maybe doing an initial audit. Then they're offering a project, maybe that's setting up a new CRM or it's doing a strategic plan. And then people are setting up back end retainers after that work is complete. And those are where it's like ongoing implementation support to help them actually implement whatever it was that they developed in that project phase. So we're seeing people, nonprofit consultants, who are really getting savvy and building real structure behind their business, productize more what they're offering. And it's really drilling down that specific issue. Like if they are maybe helping solve retention, so they offer a retention audit, then they'll Do a project and then they'll stay on for that implementation support after. And it's quite effective for. For on both sides of the nonprofits and the consultants.

B (15:35)

That's interesting. And one of the things I've also read in the report was this idea that oftentimes you hire a consultant. This idea is you're kind of an outside expert. Right. You come in and maybe you don't even come in physically, but you're just on call. You do zoom calls. But now it seems like it's changed a little bit. When nonprofits are reaching out to consultants, like the people that are part of your community, it's more like what they call a parallel labor model within the sector. Talk about the difference. Because I think that's for my listeners, people have no idea even what that means. What's the difference? What does it look like on the ground level with a nonprofit that hires a consultant?

A (16:08)

Yeah. So I mean, if anyone's ever worked inside a non profit, the hiring process is not super fast. You know, there's a lot of review.

B (16:15)

That is definitely what we're known for. That's right. Yeah, absolutely.

A (16:18)

So. So everyone's got to sign off, everyone's got to do the interviews. And, and I hear from people who are still trying to apply to jobs, you know, they've made it to three or four rounds of interviews, or three, you know, finalized at the end, like, hey, are you going to hire me or not? And then, you know, they get ghosted or they decide, oh, actually we're not going to hire for this position right now. So just the nature of the bureaucracy of the sector, I think really doesn't shine really well here with the hiring because even, even organizations that are hiring, they're not moving fast enough to solve their problems. So what's happening is with people who are offering consulting and maybe before they were a development director, and now they're offering some kind of fundraising support to solve a specific issue. I know someone who offers specifically retention support. So I'll use that example. They're able to say, do you have a problem with retention? Because, you know, some organizations, it's acquisition. But a lot of these older organizations been around for a while, they have this door, you know, the bottom's falling out of their fundraising program and people aren't coming back. So if you have that specific problem and you want to pull that specific lever, I can work with you as soon as next week. And you don't have to work through all this, you know, bureaucracy of hiring me, onboarding me setting up my 401k, setting up my benefits. Like, let's just get on a call next week and start solving this problem. And I'm going to tell you what next steps are. It's much more immediate, it's much more transactional in a good way. But I do think that is what is, is nice about this, is that it's not the consulting of yesteryear. Where, and I know people joke about this term consultant a lot. Where when you're inside the nonprofit, you see a consultant come in and they sit in the conference room and they, they tell you how to tell time on your watch or whatever, you know, they sell. They don't really, they don't really do anything and then they waltz out the door with a big fat check. That's not what this, this is people that love the work that they do, they are a seasoned fundraiser, a seasoned executive director, someone who is passionate about the mission that they choose maybe to work with a certain kind of nonprofit. Maybe they really love groups that are working with at risk children, or they really love groups that are working with the environment and they're specializing in supporting those kinds of programs. And they say typically these programs struggle with these kinds of things. So I'm going to come in, I'm going to tell you guys what I've seen working with other groups. I'm going to assess the situation, I'm going to come up with a plan for you, I'm going to help you implement that plan and I'm going to stay on, on the back end to make sure that all these things actually go into place. Your team gets trained, and there's, there's a lot more partnership there than what you might have seen in the past with a more stuffy agency type situation. These are 80% or more of these are solopreneurs too. So one person shops.

B (19:00)

We'll be right back. Are you looking for an easy and effective way to boost your nonprofit's donations? Well, look no further than Donorbox, the online fundraising platform that streamlines your fundraising efforts, maximizes donations, and simplifies giving for your supporters. With Donorbox, you can create beautiful donation forms, accept digital wallet payments, track donations, and send auto receipts. And the best part, there are no setup or monthly fees and no long term contracts required. So what are you waiting for? Visit donorbox.org today to get started. That is www.donorbox.org. Okay, now let's talk about some of the misconceptions, or potentially some people would call them simplistic narratives when it comes to nonprofit consultancy, how do they fail to capture the complexity of consultants, real experiences? I'm guessing you gave a little bit of a scenario of a typical, I think, like what people think of a consultant. Yeah, they come in, they don't say much, they interact, and then they get a big fat check. And then people are like, hey, wait a second, I'm the one doing the work. Right. So that's a misconception, I think, of what really they do. And certainly things are changing too. So talk about that a little bit more about what is truly, I would say, an effective nonprofit consultant from what you've seen.

A (20:17)

Yeah. So I think the number one misconception, and we've discussed this insider community, is that the consultants are taking a lot of risk on themselves. They're taking their. Either they're going on a spouse's healthcare or they're taking their own healthcare out in the marketplace. They're taking out their own insurance, they're setting up all their own business processes. And a lot of the work to go find clients and build this pipeline is on them. And I think sometimes people make fun of this idea that everyone wants to be a consultant. And it's true. Everyone thinks it's great. You see a lot of sort of bogus BS videos on Instagram or Facebook saying build passive income. And that was a big thing in the last few years. And they think, oh, I'll just, I'll go out and I'll build a digital product and everyone's going to buy it and I'm going to never have to work again. And, and so maybe there's, there's some idea there that that's what consulting is. It's just a way to like, get rich quick. And that's not at all what it is. It's really building out the fundamentals of, of a business. You have to have your own marketing, you have to have your own QuickBooks set up. You have to be working with an accountant if you're, if you're having enough revenue come in from different streams. You have to be very careful about how you're pricing and packaging the scopes of work. You have to have a lot of understanding of the groups that you're working with. And it's all on you if you, if you're not able to fill that pipeline or deliver fulfill for these people. So it's very serious and it's a real career line. So when we're seeing it come up as this parallel labor market, I think what we saw and why we decided to Jump into building this community and supporting these businesses is because there were not a whole lot of guidelines on how to structure it. And we made every mistake in the book when we started and didn't know really how to structure these proposals and what to charge for, what not to charge for. And so that that experience for a nonprofit consultant is actually, it's a crash course through business. In addition to then having to figure out how to market yourself and position yourself and then actually have conversations with nonprofits and get in the door and then actually now fulfill the work. And a lot of times you're doing it on your own. So it can be lonely, it can be a little isolating at times. And, and that was the primary driver for building our community was that people need a place to go to ask each other, well, have you seen this happen? And how do you handle this with a client? And by producing this study and by creating this community for consultants, we feel that as more people get into this and are really taking it seriously, that it's becoming more structured and nonprofits themselves are realizing, hey, this is actually an option for us to get a quick fix to a solution, that otherwise we just really have no capacity to fix ourselves.

B (22:48)

Got it.

A (22:49)

Yeah.

B (22:49)

No, that makes total sense. And maybe that's. We can go to next. In terms of the practical questions this report really answers when it comes to nonprofit consulting, Things like who consults and how much income is distributed, what drives higher or lower earnings. Talk about what the report really answers with when it comes to kind of the overall data that you're surveying and what you're finding with nonprofit consultants today.

A (23:10)

Yeah, so like I said, I think the conception previously was that consultants were. Were retirees. They were people that were like, oh, you know, I've been executive directors for a long time, and this is an end stage career thing. And what we're seeing from our survey respondents, again, 381 people. So it's sizable. It's overwhelmingly middle career people age like 35 to 45. They've been in the sector maybe 10, maybe 15 years, but they, they don't see a place for growth anymore inside the nonprofit. And so they've made a change. Maybe they were laid off. Maybe they, they. There's nowhere else to go. But they're transitioned. And a lot of them, the majority have transitioned into this in the last five years. So this is absolutely a post Covid shift. And I think maybe people have dabbled a little bit and then some have gone back to their jobs. The ones that are staying are Sticking it out. But we're seeing that this, it's beginning to become more established that we saw. We found hourly rates were on average nationwide $150 an hour or more. We found that the people that were full time again we're making on average or the median was 87, 000 but it went up well over six figures for people who are working full time and project size, business structure, these were things that were going to indicate higher success than simply just working more hours or working in a particular specialty. So it's very positive news. And, and most of them, I believe upwards of 70% said that they plan to continue. So this is. No one's leaving, this is not going anywhere. Which is really cool to hear.

B (24:41)

Yeah, no, that's really helpful and I, that's. I want to get into, you know, I know it sounds like it's hard to break out because there's people that are kind of transitionally trying consultancy. There's those fractional workers out there, there's part time, there's full time consultants. When you look at it, if someone were listening today to my show and thinking I may, that may be where I want to go. Can you lay out, you've already kind of given some data points but maybe lay out what would be a good expectation for them depending on what they decide to do. Like if they launch right into a full time or if they slowly move into a consult consultancy job, you know, while maybe even they're kind of transitioning out of their current job at an actual nonprofit, you know, brick and mortar, so to speak. Tell my listeners, if you will, what would be the pathway for them to take and also specifically, you know, financially, how can they make it if they do it that way?

A (25:26)

Yeah, yeah. So it really is going to come down to having that great business structure foundation. So having we, you know, when we work with people again, the first question is what do I offer? So, so coming into this knowing that you're going to have to, you cannot be a generalist and come into this and differentiate yourself. Maybe you're going to offer a few things once you get going and you have some people coming to you. But it's going to be a lot about who's your network right now, who can you leverage organically before you really launch, who can you have conversations with and talking to them about what needs they're seeing in the market that they can meet. So I always am telling people, you know, don't just offer what you think people want. And because you don't know you have no idea. The needs are changing all the time. You need to go out and have these conversations, even if you're a year out from actually launching yourself and ask people and understand those pain. Points to a T. What kind of nonprofits you want to work for. Really developing that ideal client Persona and thinking through all of these things. Not just, I know there's nonprofits out there and I want to help them. That's not really a sophisticated answer to starting consulting because it is, is getting increasingly competitive, although there's plenty of work to go around. So you really do need to be able to differentiate yourself up front. Thinking about after you talk to these people, okay, what would a package look like? What problem would it solve? What outcomes am I going to be helping them to achieve? And then the sweet spot that we were seeing is that in that initial phase, people are landing one to three or zero to three clients in their first year. And then by year it's two to three. Getting into that sweet spot of maybe four to six clients at a time was when people were really replacing their full time income. And it was, is actually. I mean, I've seen people in our program replace their full time income, 150,000 director level salary within four to six weeks. I've really seen that happen. Not everyone, I don't want you to believe that that's the only thing. But if you have thought through the fundamentals, you have a network that you can go to or you're starting to build that network, which there's a variety of ways to do that. Once you launch, if you've really landed all of those things properly. Yeah. Four to six weeks. I've seen people sign contracts and then they're like, oh great, how do I fulfill this work? But that's a different problem.

B (27:33)

Exactly. That's another issue. Totally. Okay. Within that we've been throwing around a couple of terms and I thought it would be good just getting for my listeners understand this because for some this is a new world. A lot of people are talking more and more about fractional workers. You know, fractional CEOs, fractional CFOs, fractional COOs. Talk about the difference in your mind between a consultant on the one hand and a fractional worker for a nonprofit position, whatever that position is.

A (27:56)

Yeah. And I don't, you know, it's very in flux. Everyone's got a different definition. I don't know how different it is, truly. I think, I think the idea behind fractional is that you're taking on three. Well, you know, Three to four well priced part time retainers is what you're doing for each person. So, so if I'm a fractional coo, maybe I'm coming in or is it fractional accounting support? Maybe I'm taking on three to four clients and I'm going to do their books. And, and I figure that's about how much time I have in my, that I can do this for four people. They can't afford a full time person to come in, but they only need someone doing basic bookkeeping, basic reconciliation, basic payroll. I can do those three things and I can do it for about four people. If I charge each 13000amonth, that's 12, 000amonth total. And I just renew those year over year and occasionally bring someone new into my pipeline as maybe some leave. I, I think that's great. I think that's phenomenal for, for some people to do. If that's what you want to do, that's fine. It's a little limiting sometimes when it comes to your time because your, your asset is your time. And so if you're taking on a hundred percent retainer clients, you really don't have room to grow in other directions or try out new clients or new offerings. So the healthiest mix and the people making the most according to the survey were people that had 50% to 75% retainer income, but then they had about 25% was left open for projects or smaller audits or you know, smaller engagements because that was where they were able to maybe take on a big project with that 25% time that was, you know, they could charge a sizable amount, 30,000, 40,000 for that project and that opens, could open doors for you. Maybe you come up with different ideas for things you want to offer. So I do think the fractional, the retainer, that's excellent as a baseline for your income to stabilize you. Having predictable income is going to be really, really important for you early on. You can predict, you know, what you're making month over month the same way you would with a W2 job. But then leaving enough room in your portfolio to take on projects I think is a great way to approach it.

B (30:02)

Okay, good. Well, let's go back to one of the things you mentioned before that when it comes to like if you're wanting to start a nonprofit consultancy business and, and someone maybe you're listening right now and you're thinking this is what I think I'm going to do, this is what I want to do. What you've told me before, and I think you were basically kind of reiterated just in that last two questions ago. The idea is that you can't be specific enough. In other words, the more you narrow your niche for, you know, example of it's, I'm going to really focus on nonprofits that work with the environment, and I'm going to provide financial planning or whatever. You know, be really specific of what you want to do. It seems like that's the best route to go because you carve yourself out and say why you are really valuable in contrast to all the other consultants. Is that still accurate? Is that still the case? And is there any examples that came out of the report that would reconfirm that?

A (30:50)

Yeah, I don't know exactly if anything in the report would underline it, but my experience, I am, from our experience, I'm anti generalist in your marketing. Now I'm not. And I always have to differentiate this with our members because if you are, let's say, offering strategic planning and. But you have 10 years experience as a development director and someone in your network comes up to you and says, hey, can you help me with like a development plan or fundraise, whatever. I'm not telling you to turn that work away. You know, if they're saying, hey, I'm gonna pay you 6,000amonth, can you do this? And you're like, well, it's technically not in my niche to do this. I'm not saying don't take that job. Absolutely take that job. But in terms of how you position yourself, if you're posting on LinkedIn, if you're writing a blog, if you're putting anything out there, what you're trying to do is attract a specific ideal client, an avatar. You know, if you're, if anyone, fundraisers are listening, you know, you're looking for the ideal donor who's attracted to your mission for a specific reason. So when we started, we thought, well, Catalina knows how to do all of this marketing stuff and I know how to do all this development stuff. Let's just post everything that we know how to do on our website and with three columns, 30 bullets. And it was stupid. You know, it was stupid. Because who's going to come to that website and say, like, like, let me just sift through all of these possible things I need and then think about which one I want to hire them for. It's just not how our brains work when it comes to buying, particularly not in the day when you have Instagram and Facebook and all these things that are Serving you up. You know, if you're, if you're going on vacation, you know that your phone in 24 hours is going to start showing you ads for sunglasses, beach towels, resort getaways. You know, it knows. And people are conditioned now to be having things meet them where they are, when they need it, and then they click and buy. So that's what people are looking for, nonprofits are looking for. If they're like, oh, I have a real big problem right now with, all right, we have, we need a succession plan. We have an executive director that's retiring. We really need help. I don't know what I'm going to do if someone pops up and says, do you need a succession plan for your. For your outgoing exec? You're like, yes, click now. Buy. I need this. So it's solving the problem where they are, when they are, when they need it. That's how you're going to attract a pipeline, and that pipeline is going to lead to predictable revenue. Again, someone approaches you and wants to pay you a lot of money to do something that isn't on your website, and you know how to do it, please do it. You know, making money is the most important thing to stabilize your income first. But in terms of actually marketing yourself. Yeah, you want to, you want to pick a lane.

B (33:19)

Okay, so far with the report, I know that you mentioned before, you know, this is still new, number one, new for you and Catalina, but also just new to have someone be this intentional about, you know, gathering a report about nonprofit consultancy. What are you finding? Were some of the biggest surprises, perhaps gaps, or maybe those things that you're still trying to figure out? You have some data points, and maybe there's not enough data points to really come to conclusions. Is there anything that fall into either one of those categories that when you looked at the results of your report,

A (33:46)

I think nothing was shocking. I do think we were pleasantly surprised to see that hourly rate at 150. We were pleasantly surprised to see that people were optimistic about continuing consulting, a little less optimistic about the sector overall. We asked some questions qualitatively about how do you feel about the sector? And people were concerned about budget. People were concerned about just nonprofits being able to hire them. But that wasn't the. It didn't seem to be deterring them from actually working with nonprofits, although they did say that there is still a lot of, I guess, like, room for education, for nonprofits themselves about how to find consultants. And there have been some attempts at marketplaces that haven't really panned out yet. But I think education for nonprofits would be the next thing in our minds that wasn't really be tapped here is like, what do nonprofits know about how to hire a consultant, how to find them, how to work with them? Have they ever budgeted for that before? How would they present that to a board? These are the things that people run into a lot when they're trying to pitch a nonprofit. They're like, we don't know. We've never budgeted for this. We don't know how to do this. Or we budgeted. Our budget doesn't renew until next year. So again, those bureaucratic factors come into play. Those are the things that, that I think we would want to in a next report would be how to look at it from a nonprofit's point of view, how we can help bring these two groups together. Because if they're not hiring, they still have problems they need to solve. There's all these people out here with high quality skill sets and abilities, and it's just, how do you bring those two together? So we. So that's definitely a top priority for us as we move forward and what we would like to tackle next.

B (35:21)

Yeah. Well, I'm glad you're doing this again. There's not many people that I'm aware of are doing this kind of work in this space specifically. So in terms of, you know, creating your own niche, good job. You know, I think you're really doing a good job and you're providing good data for us nonprofit leaders and as nonprofit consultants. So I'm sure my listeners are going to want to find a little bit more information about this report and of course, about you and Catalina and the work you do. So how best can they do that? What's. What's the best way for them to get this information?

A (35:45)

So our organization, our community is called Relatable Nonprofit. You can find us at Relatable Nonprofit. Com. We are on Instagram, sort of a funny meme account, if you want to see some jokes about nonprofit life. And Catalina is also a religious LinkedIn user. So if you look up Catalina Parker on LinkedIn, you're going to find her sharing a lot of information about the work that we're doing. If you're interested in support building your nonprofit consulting business, of course, please contact us. You can book a call and we'll talk to you about our community and how we can support you there.

B (36:17)

Yeah, no. Well, thanks again, Julia, for coming on the show. And just for my listeners out there, if you're been considering it and you're thinking about it and you've been mulling it around like maybe now is the time to pull the trigger, so to speak, on becoming a consultant. And yeah, reach out. You know, you can reach out to me, obviously you can reach out to Julia, reach out to Catalina. I think it may be encouraging for you to hear there's a lot more people doing this exact thing and they're finding success and that's what your report ultimately found. At the end of the day, they're doing well. They're staying with it. In fact, they're growing their different consultancy companies. So I think that's great. Well, again, Julia, thanks for coming back. Hey friends, I wanted you to know that this podcast can be found Insights, itunes, Spotify, Amazon. Much appreciate you having podcasts and wherever you listen to other podcasts, I also want to encourage you to like subscribe and share this podcast with others. This will actually help us get this great content out to more nonprofit leaders just like you. You can also join the nonprofit leadership podcast community, find other resources and interviews of past guests, all on my website, nonprofit leadershippodcast.org well, thanks again for listening and until next time, keep making your world better. This podcast is sponsored by DonorBox Donor Box, helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business.