Consultant Training Programs

We help you raise the standard of practice across your community

“The development of a strong consultant pool may be one of the smartest investments a grantmaker or intermediary can make. ”

Funders, nonprofits, and consultants across the continent are concerned about the variable quality and availability of consultants who truly understand nonprofits.

A good portion of the work of nonprofits requires the support of skilled, knowledgeable consultants and facilitators. The shortage of skilled helpers leaves many nonprofits struggling alone.

Fortunately, most regions have many people—consultants, academes, and others—who, with additional training and coaching, can add new skills and serve their community well for decades to come.

For this reason, an investment in training local consultants is one of the smartest investments a grantmaker can make. It brings better quality consulting to their grantees and increases the choices for consultation within the region.

Fieldstone Alliance 's consultant training is based on the book Consulting with Nonprofits: A Practitioner's Guide by Carol Lukas.

We adapt our consultant training to meet your goals, budget, and time frames. For example, training can:

• Deepen the skills of experienced consultants
• Enhance the practice of early-career consultants
• Help grantmakers provide capacity building coaching to grantees
• Prepare nonprofit consultants to work with low-income, faith-based, or immigrant communities
• Give experienced consultants specialized skills in topics such as strategic planning or collaboration.
• Introduce leaders in nonprofit, business, or academia to the art and craft of nonprofit consulting

Following are three samples from our range of consultant training including: Introduction to Nonprofit Consulting; Strategic Planning for Consultants; and Collaboration for Consultants. Please call us to talk about your particular goals and interests.

Sample 1: Introduction to Nonprofit Consulting
Deliverable in a half-day orientation to consulting for people who hope to consult with nonprofits, a one-day introductory training, or a two to three day in-depth skills development program.

Topics and objectives

1. Understand the unique elements of consulting with nonprofit organizations.
2. Understand the six-stage process of consulting and its use as a planning and problem solving tool.
3. Learn a range of consulting roles and how to make appropriate choices to get results and manage relationship dynamics.
4. Understand key elements in the business of consulting, including pricing and marketing.
5. Review core competencies required for nonprofit consulting, and establish learning objectives for professional development as a consultant. Note: we often do a pre- and post-survey skill assessment, to give each participant feedback on how their self-perception of skills changed as a result of the training.

Participants receive a copy of Consulting with Nonprofits: A Practitioner's Guide by Carol Lukas to help them apply what they learned.

Sample 2: Strategic Planning for Consultants
This training covers how to facilitate strategic planning processes for nonprofit organizations or collaboratives.

Topics and objectives (depending on time available and audience experience and interest)

1. Assessing an organization's readiness for strategic planning.
2. How to customize strategic planning processes to fit financial, political, and cultural factors in the nonprofit's environment.
3. Typical nonprofit consulting roles, and how they influence your approach to strategic planning.
4. Practice facilitating the three most challenging dynamics in strategic planning: visioning, strategy development, and group decision making.
5. How to estimate time and develop realistic strategic planning consulting proposals.

Participants receive copies of Consulting with Nonprofits: A Practitioner's Guide by Carol Lukas and Strategic Planning Workbook by Bryan Barry to help them apply what they learned.

Sample 3: Collaboration for Consultants
Consulting with collaboratives differs from consulting with individual organizations. With multiple organizations, the process is more complex. The dynamics can be electric, power issues are critical, and estimating time and cost is difficult.

Topics and objectives (depending on time available and audience experience and interest)

1. How consultants can add the most value to collaborative efforts.
2. Typical consulting roles as applied to collaboratives.
3. Skills and tools for each stage of collaborative development.
4. Practice facilitation of the three most challenging dynamics in collaboration: joint planning, negotiating operating agreements, and group decision making.
5. Assessing your collaboration consulting skills.
6. How to estimate time and develop realistic collaboration consulting proposals.

Participants receive copies of The Collaboration Handbook by Winer and Ray and Strategic Planning Workbook by Bryan Barry to help them apply what they learned.

Related resources

Consulting with Nonprofits: A Practitioner's Guide

The Organization-Consultant Relationship: Making It Work
A brief article with tips on how to hire the right consultant, at the right time, for the right reason .

Consultant Survey Results (197K PDF)
Professional Development Needs of Consultants Serving the Nonprofit Sector
La Piana Associates, Inc. a nd Fieldstone Alliance jointly conducted a survey of 322 consultants from around the U.S. The objective was to learn about the types of professional development opportunities available, how useful consultants considered them to be, and what opportunities consultants would like to have.

Five Nonprofit Trends and Their Implications for Capacity Builders
Bryan Barry identified trends that will affect how capacity building work is done in the future and the implications for capacity builders.

For more information, please contact Sandy Jacobsen at 651.556.4510 or email her at sjacobsen@FieldstoneAlliance.org.