In many circles, “consultant” seems to be a dirty word. Perhaps only lawyers have a worse reputation as cash cows. I’m guessing House of Lies hasn’t helped that reputation, but at the heart of the stigma, as I see it, is a frustration at how much money consultants cost versus the impact they deliver. We can’t seem to live without them (it’s nearly impossible for any organization to sustain every capacity it could possibly need internally), but this doesn’t warm […]
CompassPoint
How Can We Make Nonprofit Consulting Transformational?
Late last year, we launched a survey with Shiree Teng and CompassPoint to learn more about how nonprofits are working with consultants. We wanted to know: Are nonprofits able to find the help they need? How is the working relationship between nonprofits and consultants? Is the work sticking? We had a small (264), but diverse (in size, age, and focus) set of responses. The majority of respondents had an operating budget greater than $1 million, with almost 20% in the […]
Nonprofits, Please Take our Survey on Consultants!
Last year, Shiree Teng approached us with an itch she’s been wanting to scratch for years now. Shiree has been a social justice and community activist for over three decades, and she’s spent a good part of the past few decades focusing on organizational effectiveness, learning, and evaluation work. One of the things she observed, especially in her role as an advisor to the Packard Foundation’s Organizational Effectiveness Program, was that nonprofits seem to use consultants quite a bit. If consultants […]
Our First Year
Tomorrow, on September 15, 2012, Groupaya celebrates its one year anniversary. It completely snuck up on all of us. We’ve had our noses to the grindstone this whole year, focusing on doing great, meaningful work, on learning as much as we can, on exploring innovative ways to make a greater impact on the world, and on living our values. It’s been incredibly intense and an absolute joy. We all feel very lucky to have had this experience together this first […]