Podcast: How to Hire the Right Capital Campaign Consultant and Get Your Board Fully On Board

Season 5, Episode 26

Hiring a capital campaign consultant can quietly shape the success of your entire campaign, long before a single dollar is raised.

In this episode, Amy Eisenstein and Andrea Kihlstedt walk through how nonprofit leaders can involve their boards, educate their teams, and choose a capital campaign consultant with clarity and confidence. Amy and Andrea share why the consultant selection process itself creates valuable learning for board members and staff, even before any hiring decision is made.

This episode offers practical guidance for nonprofit executives, development leaders, and board chairs who want to approach consultant selection with intention rather than pressure or assumptions.

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Amy Eisenstein:
You want to make sure you hire the right campaign consultant, and we’re going to tell you how.

Hi, I’m Amy Eisenstein. I’m here with my colleague and co-founder, Andrea Kihlstedt, and today we are talking about getting your board involved and the process for how to hire the right campaign consultant for your campaign. Andrea, it’s a really big, important decision that nonprofit leaders need to make as they’re thinking about and getting ready for a capital campaign.

Getting Ready to Hire a Capital Campaign Consultant

So what are some of the first things that you think a leadership team should do as they get ready to hire a campaign consultant?

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah, Amy, I’m so glad we’re doing this topic because I think most people don’t think carefully about the process of hiring a consultant, and in my opinion, it’s one of these Trojan horse topics, which is that you go through a process, presumably in order to pick the right consulting firm, but you also, in the process of doing that, you educate your board members and your staff members about capital campaigns, and the education is almost as important as picking the right consultant.

So don’t just decide, well, we know we’re going to hire consultant, Susie, or this consultant or that consultant. Actually think about what a process should be that will enable your staff and board members to learn by talking to a variety of consulting firms before they make the final decision.

Amy Eisenstein:
And actually, I think an important point that you made without perhaps making it is that a lot of organizations are unsure if they’re going to hire a consultant or if they should, and maybe some people at your organization think you shouldn’t, that you can do it yourself, and going through the process of interviewing consultants or talking to consultants and researching them actually provides a ton of education. Then you’ll be able to actually make a decision about what a consultant could and could not do for you or would and wouldn’t do for you, and so then you may make come to a different decision, and so the process is the point, right?

You and Sarah talk about the process is the point. Your board members, your leadership team are going to learn so much from interviewing consultants, and then at the end of the day, you may or may not go with one, which is fine, but of course we’re totally biased and we think consultants bring a lot to the table.

What Does the Hiring Process Look Like?

So let’s talk about what the process looks like.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yep, so let’s start with your board. Your board is very involved in the early process of developing this capital campaign and your board is going to have strong feelings about a consultant, and it’s not uncommon that you have some board members. You’ll have some board members that say:

“We don’t need a consultant. We don’t want a consultant.”

And with this idea of process, focusing on process, you can walk right around that. So go to your board chair. The first thing to do is to go to your board chair and say, “I’d like to put in place a process for talking to consultants.” We don’t have to decide we’re going to hire a consultant or not hire a consultant before we do this, but I think we should actually identify and talk to a few consultants and then revisit that question. Then decide not only if we’re going to hire, but who we might hire.

So the process is just a wonderful way in and way of circumventing these strong feelings that people might have.

Amy Eisenstein:
You can think of it as a free mini training, right?

A little education about campaigns because every consultant that you talk to is going to teach you something, and so the number one thing not to do is create an RFP. Unless you’re at an organization that requires you to create some sort of RFP before hiring or making any significant expenditure, I would say don’t.

First, just talk to consultants, tell them what’s going on, what you’re up to, and ask how they can help. They will give you a proposal. You don’t have to tell them exactly what you need. You can tell them about your project and about your fundraising, and they should ask you lots of questions in order to propose how they would support you and your team.

First, Put Together a Consultant Selection Team

Andrea Kihlstedt:
So Amy, I want to kind of walk back a little before the RFP question comes up, and let’s look at the pieces of hiring a consultant. I mean the first piece is I think putting together a committee, some kind of an ad hoc committee that will oversee the process and be part of the interview and selection team. So that’s number one. That should include some key staff members. It should include some key board members who are interested in being part of the process, and if you have a real naysayer on your board about this whole thing, you may want to invite involve that person as well.

Amy Eisenstein:
I raised my eyebrows at that. You may not.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
You may not.

Amy Eisenstein:
But you don’t want them to upend the process. So think carefully about that.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
If they’re willing, you’d rather have them be part of the decision process than to go through a whole process, make a decision, and then have someone have a cranky board member derail it all at the end, right? So we could do a whole podcast on cranky board members.

Amy Eisenstein:
We probably have.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah, so the first thing is to put together some kind of a consultant selection team.

The Rest of the Hiring Process

The second thing is to identify consultants that you might consider, and there are various ways to do that. I’ll talk about that in a minute. The third thing is to have some way for those consultants to send you their information, get you their information, make presentations to you, to interact with those consultants so you have some way to evaluate that list and see who rises to the top, and the fourth part is to make decisions about whether you’re going to hire a consultant than who you would choose to hire. So those are the four things that you want to be doing in the process piece.

Putting Together a Consultant Selection Committee

Now, if we’re talking about the first, putting together a committee, I like committees of about five people. I think five is a good number.

If you get eight or 10, it gets really unwieldy. If you get two or three, if someone doesn’t show up, it doesn’t feel like a committee, right? So see if you can get five people to serve, maybe a couple of staff members and a couple of board members or a key volunteer. You may want to get six people because one or two aren’t going to show up. That still leaves you with a decent number.

So figure out who those people are going to be first and then recruit them for the process. When you recruit them for the process, be clear about how long it’s going to take and what it is you’re going to ask of them. Put together a little job description. Say:

“This is an ad hoc process. Maybe we’re going to meet three times. We hope to get it all done by March 1st or whatever.”

But don’t just say, “Come and do this with us.” Be pretty clear about it so that they’re willing to say yes. So that’s number one.

How to Find Ideal Consultants for Your Organization

Number two, where are you going to find a group of consultants that you’re going to want to consider? And Amy, why don’t you take a crack at that?

Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah. Okay, so I would say first, of course, ask your board and leadership team and staff members. If they’ve worked with consultants and had good experiences, right? You might want to consider consultants that are familiar with your organization or that your board members have worked with at other organizations.

So that’s probably the most obvious first step. You could also call similar organizations. If you’re part of an animal shelter network, you might call some animal shelters that you’re aware of that have recently gone through capital campaigns, or same thing with independent schools. There are consultants that do those types of campaigns over and over, and it’s a good idea to consider one or two of them. Often there’s a local consultant that’s known in the community, and I would say then you want to consider of course, a slightly bigger national firm. So there are several of those.

And I would say always on your list, of course, since we’re doing this podcast should be Capital Campaign Pro, and I hope that as you go through the process that Capital Campaign Pro lands on your top three or four consultant list because we provide some very different and unique things, benefits to the organizations that we work with. We’ll get to that.

Okay, so you now have a small list. I would go to all of those websites, right? So anybody that was referred to you, anybody that you know about, visit the Capital Campaign Pro website and do a little homework just looking around at their websites of these consultants that have been referred to you. Any other ideas for getting names of organizations?

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah, did you say ask board members?

Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yes, so if board members have a horse in the race, you better figure out who that is right up front. So yeah, if you start with a list of six or eight firms perhaps, it’s not that you’re going to interview all those firms, but looking at those firms and having some initial conversations with them is already going to start educating you about the process. You’re going to learn from every one of those conversations. Now, then the question is okay, how do you get to know those firms? And Amy suggested looking at their websites and contacting them. Amy, you talked a little bit about, what do you call them?

Amy Eisenstein:
I don’t know, a discovering call, an introductory get to know you session.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah, but about not wanting to write a list of —

Amy Eisenstein:
Are you thinking of an RFP?

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yes, an RFP. Thank you, I PDF RFP. I couldn’t go and get the initials right.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yes, all these letters, right? Acronyms.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Too many letters.

Why You Shouldn’t Do an RFP

So I want to talk a little more about why you shouldn’t do an RFP because it’s kind of funny really why you shouldn’t do it. People think that they should do an RFP so that every consultant will submit something that is similar and then you can tell how they all line up, what you’re going to get for how much money, but here’s the real problem with an RFP. When you tell people what it is you want from them, you are going to get a proposal that tells you that they will give you what it is you told them you want. Right?

Now, that’s a funny problem when you’re trying to evaluate consultants because what you’re really trying to do is to figure out who knows their stuff and who doesn’t know their stuff. You want to know what people think they should do for you or will do for you, not based on what you think they should do, but based on what they think they should do. So don’t give them something that says, “Here’s what we want you to do.” Honestly, you probably don’t know what a consultant should do.

Amy Eisenstein:
Well, that’s the real problem is we so often see RFPs admittedly by CEOs or development directors who have never run a capital campaign or maybe only one. So you don’t really know what you want yet or what a consultant offers. So the RFPs that we see are really crazy asking for things that aren’t going to help them or whatever it is.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Well, and honestly, there are many really capable and good firms that don’t respond to RFPs.

Amy Eisenstein:
Well, that’s the truth. Busy, really successful firms don’t respond to RFPs because they see them as a waste of time and a useless exercise. I mean it’s much better for me and all consultants to have a conversation or two first.

First, we need to learn about you, your campaign, your fundraising, your leadership team, what’s happening, timelines, deadlines. There’s so many questions that we’re going to have. Some of that you can put in an RFP, but really it’s about having a conversation and then we can respond in a personalized, customized way as to how we would work with you and what we think you need, and then you can evaluate us based on that proposal that we offer.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
And that should be the case with pretty much every consulting firm. So the first thing you want to do when you have your list is to get in touch with them, to find out who the head of the firm is, to see if you can talk to the head of the firm or the person who does the initial work with prospective clients, and then see how they function. Turn it over to them. Don’t tell them everything. Say:

“We are considering a capital campaign. Here’s the kind of organization we are. Is this the kind of work you do and how would you approach our particular situation?”

Then you need to watch really carefully about whether they are curious about you, see what questions they ask, see what process they suggest, because in watching how they function, you in this initial process, selection process, you’re going to learn a ton about how they would function should you hire them.

So call them and then turn it over to them and see what happens. If they don’t get back to you or if they don’t respond in a prompt and effective way, you don’t want to hire this firm. I don’t care who they are, you don’t want to hire them.

Traps of Hiring a Local Campaign Consultant

Amy Eisenstein:
Andrea, let’s talk about some traps that nonprofits frequently fall into or can fall into in terms of often hiring a local consultant. I mean there’s a lot of talk about, let’s find a local consultant, and there are pros and cons to that and you and I have both been local consultants over the course of our career, and now we have a slightly different model, but what are some of the traps that you see nonprofits falling into?

Andrea Kihlstedt:
The biggest trap is this. It’s very easy to believe that a local consultant will come with their lists of prospects, that they will bring prospects to your organization, and that’s simply false. Any consultant that tells you that they’re going to bring their prospects with them when they come and they’re going to get grants because they know that the local prospect community is trouble. I mean think about it this way.

If I were a local consultant and I worked a lot in a particular community, do you think I would have a list of donors who I brought to every one of my clients? That’s got to be nuts. Those donors wouldn’t be happy with me for very long if I’m promising them gifts from my list of donors, right?

Amy Eisenstein:
Right. Just a side note, that’s considered unethical from the AFP Code of Ethics. So the Association of Fundraising Code of Ethics says well, I guess this is really applying to development directors, but the same thing in my mind applies to consultants. You can’t bring donors from one organization to the next and any consultant that’s doing that, that’s not why you’re hiring them.

Good consultants leverage your connections, your current list of donors, your board members’ connections, your leadership team connections. Now, that doesn’t mean that you won’t consider and explore philanthropists in the community. You will, but it’s not because a consultant has a relationship or a connection with them.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Right. That’s right, and you really need to disabuse people of that. You need not to fall into that trap. There are some communities that have very good, very experienced, very successful capital campaign consultants, and if that’s the case in your community, those people should be on your list.

However, there are also many local consultants who don’t have very much experience, who have just left the local university, for example, and hung out their shingle, but have never really done a full campaign from the beginning to the end, right? You don’t want to hire someone who doesn’t have a ton of capital campaign experience.

Amy Eisenstein:
You don’t want to be their guinea pig. Don’t be anybody’s guinea pig.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
No. So if you’re talking to local people, check carefully and make sure that they have a lot of experience running capital campaigns or being the consultant for capital campaigns from the beginning planning process of the campaign all the way through to the end, and if they haven’t done five, 10, 15, 20 campaigns over a period of years, you probably don’t want to hire someone who’s just hung out their shingle, even if they’re local, but nonetheless, if your community has a great local consultant, experienced consultant, they certainly should be on your list. You probably should look at some of the national firms. Who else should they be talking to besides us, Amy?

Amy Eisenstein:
Well, I’m going to assume that you’re going to have enough referrals from your board members and from other like institutions that you have plenty and consider Capital Campaign Pro. So I think that to me, one of the things that we haven’t talked about are the real advantages of having a national firm bring somebody who has vast and deep experience at a wide variety and across geographies. I mean there’s something to be said for bringing an outside perspective, which is really one of the huge benefits of a capital campaign consultant, is that they’ve seen things that work or that don’t work across multiple urban, rural, suburban, big organizations, small organizations.

That’s the advantage of using a consultant is that they’ve experienced so many campaigns and they can bring that wisdom and expertise to your campaign and apply what works at your organization, and so one of the things that we really pride ourselves on here is that we can match the best consultant with the organization based on experience regardless of geography. We really leverage technology in order to do that. One of the things that we do is we bring consultants together every week. We bring organizations together every week for lots of group learning, and there’s so many benefits to that. So just a little shout-out to our model.

Last Steps When Hiring a Campaign Consultant

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Right. So, okay, Amy, so they’ve selected their group of consultants, right? They’ve whittled it down to, let’s say, three or four firms. What do they do then?

Amy Eisenstein:
Well, I think then of course, they do collect proposals, right? So you’ve probably at this point had two meetings with each set of consultants, maybe three, but you’ve had sort of a discovery call letting the consultant ask a majority of the questions. You’ve learned a little bit about that consultant. You’ve asked them some questions. Then you’ve had a second meeting. Make sure that everybody on your committee has the opportunity to meet that consultant and really talk through how that consultant would help you, and then the consultant at some point in that process can provide something in writing, a written proposal about how they would support you, and then I think your committee has a discussion.

To me, while price is a factor, really it’s about who do you want to work with and what kind of model do they provide and what kind of model would be best in your situation and for your campaign and have a discussion about that. I mean I think that you’ll find that consultants offer a wide variety of services all the way from coming and sitting in your office and sort of quote unquote doing it for you to providing strategic advice and counsel and coaching.

What we provide is strategy, planning, guidance, ongoing support, and so really it’s about what are you looking for? You’ll find different feasibility study models and ours is very different than from some local consultants out there. I encourage you to talk to us so we can talk that through with you, but it’s about model and it’s about who do you want to work with.

On Staff Working with a Consultant

Now, the one thing I would say about that is some of your board members may have very strong opinions, but the truth is that staff are the ones that are going to be most regularly working with the consultant and you should set the guidelines upfront that the staff is going to have the ultimate say, that you’re really going to consider the opinions of your board members and that you value their contributions, but the day-to-day work is done between the consultant and the staff members.

Now, the board members have to agree that this is somebody that is going to be in front of the board perhaps that they’ll respect, but don’t let the board members pick the cheapest or just the one that they’ve heard is the best through the rumor mill. Pick the consultant that you want to work with. Any final thoughts from you?

Final Thoughts

Andrea Kihlstedt:
I just think this is a really important topic. I don’t think we’ve covered it before and I think it’s important for people to know how powerful it is to actually have a process and how much they’ll learn from going through a process before they make their decision, whether to hire a consultant or who to hire.

Amy Eisenstein:
Excellent. All right, great. Well, once you’ve hired someone, then just feel good. Breathe the sigh of relief. You’ve got somebody on your team that has tons of experience that’s going to be in your court and by your side, guiding the process and supporting you along the way, and you no longer have to do it alone. So good for you.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Amy, if they want to be sure to put us on their list, what would they do?

Amy Eisenstein:
Visit capitalcampaignpro.com and sign up to speak with us. Right on the homepage, there’s a get started button and you can sign up to have a free no obligation meeting with someone on our team and we can’t wait to talk with you. All right, thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time.