How 10 Hours a Month Could Change Everything for Nonprofit Executive Directors
In your role as a nonprofit executive director, you often serve as the face of the organization. While I know its very rewarding for you, I also know that it brings with it an endless list of things to do.
But, there also never seems to be enough hours in the day to get them done.
On top of that, if you're at a smaller nonprofit, you're often working with a lean staff to carry out your mission.
Every task is important but I know you didn't become an executive director to write donor stewardship letters and fundraising emails. You took this role to run programs that help people in need in your community and to build community relationships around a shared cause.
What if you could get 10 hours back in your day to focus on running your programs and get out of the office and make those crucial connections?
This is what hiring a nonprofit communications consultant can help you achieve.
A Nonprofit Consultant Is Your Partner
There is so much work to do and so little staff – and the budget to hire more staff – to do it all. Every nonprofit has been there before.
For small nonprofits, it's especially a challenge. Your staff is stretched just as thin as you are and, inevitably, important tasks like following up to thank your donors, launching the end-of-year fundraising campaign on time, and keeping up a consistent communications schedule fall through the cracks.
By using a fractional support model and bringing on an independent marketing, fundraising or development consultant, you get a true partner and someone who can be an extension of your team at a fraction of the cost of hiring a full-time employee.
When I sit down to talk to a new nonprofit organization, I always remind them that bringing on a consultant will help them gain back time they can devote to their day-to-day operations or take a marketing, development or fundraising task off their plate that has to be done but may not be something they love to do.
A Nonprofit Consultant Is Your Genie In A Bottle
Imagine if you showed up for work tomorrow and a genie was there to grant you three wishes to make your work day run more efficiently and effectively.
Want to spend the day working hands-on with the constituents you serve with your programs?
Want to be able to get out of the office to visit with more major donors and key stakeholders and know goals are still being met at the office?
Want to have time to reach out consistently to your supporters across all of your communications channels?
You can accomplish all of this by bringing on a nonprofit consultant to help with those day-to-day tasks.
For example, in my work, I help nonprofits with a variety of hands-on donor acquisition/retention/stewardship tasks, communications messaging and outreach, and fundraising campaign planning and development.
This includes everything from crafting strategic plans and communications plans, to creating the email sequence that's sent to a brand new donor to properly thank and welcome them, to executing an entire fundraising development campaign that hits on targets throughout the year, and even developing multichannel communications outreach that covers social media, email and website content.
Nonprofit consultants step in to do the work that is necessary so executive directors, development directors and marketing coordinators can sleep soundly at night knowing everything is being done.
A Nonprofit Consultant Is Affordable
I understand that nonprofit budgets have never been tighter. But you can save so much money and still get the work done by bringing on a nonprofit consultant.
Most consultants either work on a monthly retainer basis or are brought on to handle specific projects throughout the year. Regardless of the route you might choose, it's a far less expensive choice than hiring someone full time. You avoid the cost of a full-time salary, benefits, insurance and all those other fees associated with hiring employees.
A Nonprofit Consultant Could Be Right For You
I understand that bringing on a nonprofit consultant might not be the right thing for every organization but I always encourage nonprofits to get more information and at least consider it.
I'm happy to sit down with any organization to discuss your needs and find out if you could use to bring on an outside consultant or just need some guidance on streamlining your operations to get more done with you and the limited staff you have.
I have free, no obligation consultations all the time with organizations and I'd be happy to chat with you.