In the world of consulting to nonprofits, one of what I believe to be a unique characteristic is a strong nonprofit cache on consultants who have their own niche among consultants in general and to nonprofits in particular. There is I believe a general thinking by many nonprofits that the best consultant to serve the sector's needs is another nonprofit.
So, it's not surprising that nonprofits seeking consultants likely question more the for-profit seeking to do similar work to the for-profit. Interestingly though, being a nonprofit is just one element a nonprofit brings to the table when presenting to facilitate strategic planning or governance matters or any of the disciplines a nonprofit might seek from a nonprofit. Here's a little list I've been considering in supporting a nonprofit's considering what it should look for in a consultant -- nonprofit or not.
1. Industry knowledge -- nonprofit is one component but within nonprofits there are wide sectoral distinctions - arts vs. human service vs. education vs. youth -- the list is pretty large. When a nonprofit is seeking to develop a strategic plan or a business plan it is reasonable to ask a consultant about what they know about their industry. Deep knowledge can often reduce learning curve on the part of the consultant and cost on the parr of the nonprofit in addition to bringing added-value intelligence to particularly competitive issues. On the other hand, lack of industry knowledge can mean raising questions from a fresh lens, without bias, challenging the norms and possibly leading to discoveries not otherwise possible because of the industry blinders.
2. Emotional Intelligence: the ability of the consultant to perceive emotion, use emotions, understand emotions, and, manage emotions -- an important copacity throughout consulting where separating the problems from the people and issues from interests is essential but not always that simple toward getting to common decisions.
3. Relationship: individuals know right-off their "feelings" about a prospective consultant -- too dark, too humorus, too, intelligent - -you get the picture and this matters very much in whether the people around the table want to invest their time and money in the prospective consultant.
4. Process: the approach of the consultant to get to the desired outcomes. Process in the form of time and roles and responsibilities must fit the needs of the nonprofit or they will not be effective.
5. Pricing: how much consulting cost actually and is perceived to be valued. High prices like the nonprofit Bridgespan actually attract some nonprofits because of the "if it's that expensive it must be good" position. Or low prices offered by nonprofit consulting firms being sensitive to nonprofit financial capacity but perceived perhaps as having less or no value by the prospective client. And then there's no charge: again, less or no value OR thank heavens.
There may well be other criteria but in my experience, these are the minimum used to select consultants.
