 We are so glad you found your way here to the non-profit show that we were just talking about what we did for the weekend. So we hope everyone had a lovely weekend. You're coming back, you're rested, you're recharged. I know I am, but I'm also drinking extra coffee this morning. Today's guests, we are thrilled to have you back. It's one of our favorites, Mr. Jerry Diaz, who is a CFRE, also founder and CEO of Geronimo Consulting. And Jerry's bringing to us today a topic that I am so eager to hear from you about. It's our non-profit consultants. Really worth it. So stay with us. Jerry's got some really good insights to share, but before we jump into conversation, we want to remind you who we are, if we haven't had the pleasure of meeting you quite yet. So hello to you, Julia Patrick. Julia serves as the CEO of the American Non-profit Academy and I'm Jarrett Ransom, your non-profit nerd and CEO of the Raven Group. Truly honored, Julia, to serve alongside day in and day out for the non-profit show. We are coming up soon on wrapping up this year. I cannot believe it. We've had amazing guests, which also include these amazing presenting sponsors. So shout out of so much gratitude because we're still in the gratitude train for delivering American Non-profit Academy, fundraising academy at National University, non-profit thought leader, your part-time controller, staffing boutique, non-profit nerd, as well as non-profit tech talk. These companies have been with us many from the very beginning and have helped us to produce so many amazing conversations, which you can find on all of our archive channels. Go ahead and pull out that smartphone. We know you're either on it or it's sitting right next to you. You can scan that app and download it so that you get a notification as well as find us on streaming podcast and broadcast stations. And later today, this conversation we're having right now, live, unscripted, unfiltered, right? With Mr. Jerry Diaz, we'll be up later today. So without further ado, I would love to reintroduce our guest, Mr. Jerry Diaz, CFRE, also founder and CEO of Geronimo Consulting. Welcome back, Jerry. Jerry, Julia, thank you for having me. This is such a good topic, right? I have been fortunate enough to be on the show a few times. So every time we talk about something different, so the timing on this as we talk about the year and as you make plans for 2024, when you talk about budgets and making budget allocations, consultants could be a part of that. So the timing is perfect. You know, I feel like consulting, you either love it or you hate it. And it seems like the way you are as a customer, I'm talking about from the non-profit side, you need to know how to be a good customer and to work with a consultant before you can really have a great experience. And I don't think we talk about that enough. We put it all on the onus of the consultant and then, you know, we try and mitigate expectations and performance. But advantages of a consultant starting us right off, you talk about subject matters that might be on, you know, might be in front of you, but not a part of a team or that you don't have that access. What does that look like to you, Jerry? Oh my gosh, that's a good way to start. I will say just to level set our conversation, consultants work in all three sectors, right? So our conversation today is just going to be about non-profit. And here's what I will tell you about consultants. If there's only one or two takeaways, here's one of the working with consultants as an investment, not an expense, right? They bring an expertise that you may not have on your team or not able to afford somebody, right? So when you choose them, choose them wisely and talking about the scope of work, which is what you're going to be working on, the timing, the cost, you know, particularly in when we talk about consultants in the non-profit space, you're going to see a lot of work around fund development, organizational development, board engagement, program and data management. So those are kind of some of the big pieces. But when you talk about subject matter experts, consider these very cost effective, right? So instead of hiring somebody full time for a long period of time, you have somebody for a very short period of time, right? You have clear timelines and deliverables. And it would be more expensive to hire somebody full time. I mentioned that already. And they have a bandwidth you don't have. So as a team and non-profit team, you're busy and you're busy and you're busy. And to ask you to take on another big project would seem kind of overwhelming, right? So it could be maybe your organization is looking at maybe a capital campaign, right? To expand your services. It could be that maybe your organization is at its life cycle where you need to expand staffing. So you can bring somebody, maybe you need somebody to help you redo your roadmap off a known as strategic plan, right? So these are just some really good examples of how a non-profit consultant can just kind of just, I almost want to say plug and play, right? They just come in the diversification scope, they get to know the lay of the land, they do their work, and off they go until you need them. Jerry, I love that you said think of them as an investment, not necessarily lost, right? Like that to me, you're right. If no one takes anything away, please just take that because that's a big piece. I'm curious, Jerry, are you seeing a lot of organizations like readily, I don't know, eager to take on a consultant because I'm curious if this has changed since the pandemic, right? If it's like, okay, yes, we're much more open to having a consultant work with us now. Are you seeing that happen more now than we did maybe three, four years ago? That's a great question. A hundred percent. If we had this conversation five or seven years ago, it was like, what are consultants? What do they do? Are they just here to get money from the organization that most consultants are for profit as we know? But now, if you think about a Venn diagram, consultants are part of that Venn diagram. You have the nonprofit, you have the funders, you have consultants as that ecosystem, right? That helps the organizations run more efficiently, right? I definitely have seen that. And I've also seen more people who were in non-profit leverage all their experiences and move to the other side of the aisle. I'm a perfect example. 25 years direct nonprofit experience, started Geronimo Consulting exactly four years ago this month. So instead of helping one organization, I can help many organizations, but when you talk about the outside perspective with multiple experiences, this isn't exactly what we're talking about, right? And here's what they also bring. They also bring industry best practices, right? They also bring their experience. They also bring the network of other organizations and what other people have done, right? And we can see the forest of the trees, right? So when you're in a nonprofit, you're always like in the day-to-day of providing these wonderful services and delivery and infrastructure, but a consultant can come in with a completely different perspective, right? And the other thing a consultant is, a consultant can say things other people can't, right? So we also bring that. We sometimes uncover things. And one other thing that I think is really interesting in the consultant life is sometimes we'll be brought to the table for one scope of work and then uncover other things. Kind of go, hey, you're talking about development, but there really is like a board piece to this and there really is a culture piece to this. And sometimes we can bring other people like, hey, I don't do that work specifically, but I have a cadre of other people that I can help, you know, bring to the table, you know, consultants also have other clients, we have a broader perspective. We bring that independent voice. And there's one other big piece here. The consultants number one agenda is your organization success. Yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate that too. I'm curious, Jerry, your perspective. I've heard it all and I can see both sides of this. So my question to you is, when we're looking for a consultant, excuse me, should we look for someone that has that specific sector experience? Or are we looking for someone, you know, that has a more broad experience? So for example, if we're an arts and culture organization, do we need to bring in that arts and culture expert? Are we bringing in someone that has experience broadly? I'm curious your stance on that. Oh, such a good question. I love this question. Yeah, me too. The short answer is it depends. The longer the longer answer is it really depends on where the organization is in its life cycle. And one of the first things when I do these discovery calls is when you would talk about using a consultant, how do you define success, right? What does success look like on the end when we're done, right? And then I'll let you know whether I'm a good fit, right? So and the other thing about consultants is we have a bag of tools, right? We bring up all of these tools, right? What do you need? What do you need? What do you need? Does it help if you were the executive director of an arts and culture to work for the arts and culture? Yes, absolutely. But if you're going to be talking about work governance, it doesn't really matter. Yeah, so it really depends on what that scope of work looks like. Although at the top of our conversation, I should have said choose your consultants carefully. Make sure they're vetted, make sure they have the experience, make sure they have the knowledge to make sure that when we talk about investment, then you're going to just get the full squeeze of that orange juice. You know, you say something really interesting about understanding the consultancy world. And one of them is project in completion out. Can you kind of explain that concept and how we can understand this, you know, more in terms of moving forward and even opening up our organizations to this type of interaction? Sure. So most consultants will work off something called a scope of work. This defines the work that they're going to be doing. That includes a timeframe, compensation schedule, all of that, right? It gets rid of all the ambiguity, right? It's a contract, essentially, right? They're clear deliverables for success. The other thing that the use of consultants, particularly you're talking about projects, they'll still bring forms, practices, processes, they'll help educate and train. They have that expertise, right? They usually, most of them, have really strong project management skills that they've done as a consultant. So they'll bring all of that. And then sometimes what I've found is there's like little, like, people take notes as you talk, right? They're like, Oh my God, I love that perspective. Oh, I love that website. Oh, I like this. Oh, can you send me the form? You're like, of course, right? So when you talk about that relationship, it's very special, right? And there's also like, when you bring a consultant in, it's okay to be vulnerable. It's okay to pull back the curtain. It's okay not to be perfect, right? Consultants will meet you where you're at and just say, Okay, let's work on those, right? I have that expertise. And then they can also help with other projects, right? Like, here's a perfect example of a project and project balance. You continue to grow as an organization and your infrastructure is just not keeping up. So you can bring in a consultant to take a look at your entire infrastructure, your database, accounting, maybe of use technology for programming and say, you may have a director of operations, they go, I don't have time for that. And frankly, that's not what brought me to the table. We need help. That's a perfect project and project out. And the other thing about projects and projects out is that you can also make other introductions. Like I use this one, but as a technology person, uncover something different, maybe program evaluation, you know, they're talking about the technology, you're like, Oh, you need a program person to come in and evaluate, right? So that's how I see projects in and completion out. Jared, any thoughts on that? Yeah, I know I'm right there with you, Jerry. You know, I agree with that often. It's a project that is too high level for the current team, or it's a project that keeps being pushed and pushed and pushed aside, right? And we're like, we'll get to that, you know, next, which we all know, right? There's never the perfect, you know, time to take that on. So you sometimes need to rip that band aid. I'm really curious, Jerry, and this might be more of a pointed question. But as you say, think of consultants truly as an investment, not a cost. When we're thinking of our cost for consultants, and we're looking at scheduling, you know, our budget for next year, is there a certain percentage, perhaps, of the organization that we should allocate to these expert professionals? I know that might seem like a loaded question. I myself don't even know the answer. So I'm really curious what the two of you see for that. Sure. You came with all the good questions. This is what a week off does for me. Yeah, that extra coffee. Here's how I will answer that. When you look at nonprofits, from that very top level, you talk about vision, right? Then the mission, right? And underneath mission, it's that strategic plan. And then from there, you come up with the yearly goals for development, programs, staffing, all of those. But when you're talking about consultants, go back to that strategic plan, you know, that roadmap, right? If the roadmap says in two years, you're going to double programming, if you're going to increase staff, if you're going to look at technology, you're going to relook at the board and their goals, right? That's when you kind of go, does that expertise sit either within the organization or our board of directors? And if it's not, then you can say, oh, we can identify three projects for consultants, we just now have to figure out what success looks like, then we have to find them, figure out the cost is. And that's the other piece to this is not all consultants charge the same dollar or project, right? And you know, I would probably, you know, some would even argue that you get what you pay for, right? If you want somebody with decades of experience or has a, hey, I'm in this arts and culture space, this is my forte, this is my whole thing. You know, I know of a consultant on the East Coast that only works with Jewish schools. And that's all he does, all up and down the East Coast, he's known for this, they all use him. So he has that very niche piece, right? But you're going to pay for that experience because he's worked with so many, right? So I think it all kind of depends. That was a very long answer, by the way. No, it's, I think a good thing. And it kind of leads me to the next topic that I think we need to talk about. And Jared has a lot of experience in this as well. So I'll be interested to get, you know, her point of view. But you talk about using consultants during transitions. And holy moly, we are seeing a period of transition in the nonprofit sector because we have a change of leadership due to demographics aging out. We have a different type of workforce that wants to be engaged a different way. We have a lot of things going on, plus we've just come out of a major global health pandemic. So there's, there's an argument here for transition. I can't believe that pretty much every nonprofit in America, or let me say North America can say, yeah, we're in a period of transition. I mean, it's to some degree or another, how do consultants or can consultants fit into this, this jigsaw puzzle? This is also one of those things that we've seen evolve over the last four or five years, right? We see Silver Shinami. We see the private sector poaching nonprofit executives. We see some dominant consulting. We see development people being moved up into the leadership position. So there becomes this vacuum within the organization. You can even say it's on programming, anything in that director or officer level, right? But they can support that. And there, Jared and I both are trained and due to interim placement at multiple levels, right? So there is a very strong value proposition that have type perspective, we can be agents of change, we can do evaluations. And sometimes even talking about the expansion of services, right? It does the organization, is it, are they intentional and they're going to avoid mission creep, but they want to change part of the mission. They're going to do it strategically, right? Are there more transitions that consultants can help with on expansion of space or geography? I worked with a food bank once where they're like, there's a real need outside of what we said we're going to, and we want to work with other people. We want to do environmental scan to see if we can expand our services. So some of this stuff when we talk about transition, isn't necessarily it was bad, right? And change is inevitable. But being able to have consultants there to say, either through things that beyond our control or through intentionality, how can consultants help us with that transition? Yeah. And Julia, to that I'll add, we're seeing a lot of transition, as you mentioned. I love, Jerry, you're like, it's not always for bad, it's for good. What I'm really seeing too is this influx of cash many of our organizations received during the pandemic and now kind of going back to more of a budget that they're familiar with, right? So one of the organizations I had the privilege of working with went from a 7 million to a 17 million over the last four years. And now they're kind of getting back to that 7 million. Well, what do you do? That's a huge transition. If you think of it as a balloon, the balloon was a normal size and then it really expanded almost to where it's going to pop. But then it came back down to the attrition size. So there's a lot of transitions happening. What I'm also really keen to see, and I'm curious, Jerry, what you're seeing in this space as well, funders are funding transitions. They're funding transitional projects. They're funding transitional programs and transitional leaders. It's not taboo. I'm not seeing it as taboo. I'm really seeing funders jumping on this because this is truly part of the organizational change. So 100% agree with you. And I think the other thing we're seeing as funders is they're they're evolving. Funders were always like, oh, give us a program and we'll fund the program. Now they're looking at, I know, a funding group that talks about mergers and acquisitions. I know another funder that supports consultants say, the organization comes to us as they need an assessment of whatever, whatever. And the funder will say, we will support that work that the money will go to the consultants. So that traditional model of how funders support nonprofits is evolving. This also kind of ties in that whole piece about like, what percentage of money is being raised for overhead versus fundraising, right? You know, it's like that whole, you know, you have to starve yourself as an organization and pay less people money, right? So it's this is a whole other conversation about you have to you have to support organizations with good talent to get the best mission possible, right? So it's a whole other kind of conversation. But I do think that consultants can play a role in this. You know, sometimes it's interesting to write papers, some consultants are connecting organizations. I knew one consultant locally that worked with a whole bunch of organizations. She started a CEO club. And she just said, Hey, I think there's a need for collaboration. So I'm going to connect all the dots for you. And that are in that club has now spawned other CEO clubs. Yeah. You know, Jerry, I love the holistic approach with this, but I kind of want to drill down a little bit into project management, because I think a lot of times we think, Oh, that's got to be internal. And we have to find somebody that knows, you know, as inside and out in order to have some sort of project management navigated. But you're telling us to take a look at consultants. How does this work? Sure. So a consultant can come in to help with a project or projects, right? It could be maybe you're going to start a brand new Gala and you need outside help, right? Maybe you need a scope of work to help identify needs in the community, right? Nonprofits have to be nimble to look at needs kind of go, we would love for you to do a market analysis to tell us whether or not our organization is still relevant and based on what we're doing, right? We talked about a project with infrastructure as an example. The other thing about project management for consultants is they can help a training, right? They can help other people bring other people along, right? I don't want to go as far as say you become a full mentor, but you certainly have you have that expertise. The other thing about project management consultants is they will help identify successes, challenges and opportunities. In that order, I always start with successes. And as I mentioned earlier, they have tons of experience and lots of tools in the toolkit, right? They can also help with vendors connecting other resources, right? I've done that. And I just think, you know, they are the all-around Swiss Army kind of tool that you need, right? I love that. I love it. I can see that. Yeah, I can totally see that. And I like what you said. And I think sometimes we don't recognize that enough, but the connectivity that a consultant can bring, because to your point, you've seen a lot and done a lot and you can bring that history with you and present it without prejudice, if you will, or fear, even more importantly. I mean, Jared, doesn't it seem to you that in your tenure doing this type of work, that you're given permission to say no or to point out problems or to lead maybe a group in a different way? 100 percent. And I would say for those that hire me, that's exactly why they're hiring me, right? It's like, hey, you know that this person will uncover some things perhaps that we're not ready to see. But one thing that I do know to be true is many organizations, and we've talked about this a lot, Julia. There's a founder story in every organization. And so the reason why organizations exist is never really to be an expert in fundraising or an expert in program evaluation, right? Like they exist to provide that solution to the community problem. So as Jerry mentions, as the organization evolves, as does their strategy, as does their plan and their leadership. And there's just so much that goes into it. And you're right, Julia, like really having that truth to power is something that consultants have the ability to share. Jerry, I don't know about you, but I have certainly been hired almost as if to be the person to speak what the CEO or the development director has been saying for months and they just bathe the board, the team, whomever, like they're just not grasping it. So they'll literally say, maybe if we pay someone to say this to them, they'll actually hear it this time. Oh, for sure. And sometimes consultants are brought in either on the on the upswing of growth or on the downswing of decline. We're in trouble. Like we can't fix this. We need somebody who has been here, done that, understands the landscape, who can really do an assessment and make tough decisions, right, to kind of go, this is this is an outside voice that has a lot of experience. And that's really tough. I do want to say want to come back to anybody for the viewers is that you don't necessarily have to talk about that budgeting, you should certainly budget money for consultants. But there were also funders who will help pay for them as well. So even if we're talking like if we were having this conversation and marching budget was already set, you can also find the resources to bring back. I love this. Well, you, my friend, are a tremendous resource. We love having you on. You're one of the very first people that we called at the dawn of, you know, COVID. And when we were talking to different people and getting, you know, this conversation started now moving towards our fourth year, more than 900 episodes, you were there with us from the beginning. So thank you so much. Geronimo, Jerry Diaz, CFRE founder of Geronimo Consulting. Check out GeronimoConsulting.org and you can learn more about Jerry. He's super involved in so many of our professional development organizations. And he's just been a great advocate for the sector all along. And so definitely, definitely somebody I think you need to know no matter where you are in this country. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I'll tell you another person you need to know, Jerry Ransom, the nonprofit nerd. She's somebody you need to know, CEO of the Raven Group. We are here again because of amazing, amazing investments from our sponsors. They include Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, nonprofit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, staffing boutique, nonprofit nerd, and nonprofit tech talk. These are the folks that join us day in and day out so that we can have these amazing conversations like we've had today with Jerry Diaz to kind of help us understand how this outside voice and tenor of that voice can really help our nonprofits. This has been fascinating, Jerry. Thank you for bringing us kind of full circle, especially as we end the year to understand what this type of talent can do for our organizations. Thank you for having me today. Yeah, you've been fantastic. Thank you so much, Jerry. The other thing I'll add is really looking at consultants. I love that you mentioned, consider someone on another coast. They don't have to be right there in your local community. So there's a lot of ways to really consider this. So again, thank you for joining us, sharing this perspective on consultants and how they play a major role in our sector. As we wrap up today, we hope that you'll join us again tomorrow and as we end every show, we like to remind you to please stay well so you can do well. Thanks everyone and we'll see you back tomorrow.