 Perhaps you're watching our archives or you joined us from somewhere around the planet. We are delighted to have you with us for another episode of The Non-Profit Show. Today, one of my favorite, favorite all-time people, Jerry Diaz. I like to call him Geronimo, Jerry Diaz coming to us for a really interesting conversation all about working with non-profit consultants and how that can kind of fit into what we're doing to achieve our goals. So before we dig in any further, I want to make sure that you know who I am. I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Non-Profit Academy. My trusted sidekick, Jared Ransom, I think is doing a board training or a training today. So she's not with us, but she will join us soon. Again, we have the amazing support of some fine presenting sponsors. 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So download the app. Hey, Jerry Diaz, welcome to another episode of the Non-Profit Show. Julia, thank you and the show and Jared for having me. This is an exciting topic. I've been fortunate enough to be a guest a couple of years. And my goodness, how far, starting off from the chronicles to really a daily show, really talks about the need for this kind of conversation. And that's what I love about this format is you just have people come on that know kind of an area of next piece, and they just think, I'm talking about you, I'm talking about how this works. So thank you for having me. Oh my gosh, you know, it's just I truly say this with all my heart. You are to me like one of those oracles in the nonprofit sector. I value your cadence, your wisdom, your perspective. I love your energy. And so when we wanted to talk about this, I was like, we need to get Jerry Diaz back on the show because I just think you have so much to talk about. And the first thing is I want to start with is why hire a consultant? Sure. But before I answer that question, I want to let you know that I have 25 years of direct nonprofit experience. I did that before I started Geronimo Consulting in November of 19. Geronimo Verome, named after my grandfather, which is I came up with Geronimo. And the reason I did that was because consulting is a very specialized, like you're basically selling your services, right? That you have an expertise, right? That really is the definition of a consultant. They may be no more than you, right? So after 25 year experience, I decided to start Geronimo Consulting, focusing on strategic planning, work governance, fund development. And I say that deep and wide. And the last one is coaching staff. I have learned so much. I was telling you in the pre-show, I feel like talking to a consultant is a little bit like talking to a good friend. Like, oh my gosh, pull back that curtain. What is it like? What does it feel like? How does it all work, right? So we're going to be kind of talking about that, right? So I want to talk about why you would need coaching to begin, right? You know, part of it is maybe your organization doesn't have that experience sitting there, right? So hiring a consultant kind of bridges that gap. You can use them for all sorts of things, like strategic planning, work governance. Maybe you want to hire a consultant to help you with a capital campaign program evaluation. So there's lots and lots of it. You think about as a nonprofit, your core business, how can you make it better, right? Is there a need? Sometimes when there's a change in either board or leadership, you know, there's a good opportunity, right? To say, hey, who are we and how can we leverage outside help to help us, right? So that is why I think you would probably need a consultant, right? So the use of consultants is you get access to somebody who is potentially an expert, right? Somebody who's been doing it for a long, long, long time, right? I mean, if you're talking fund development, I know a lot about fund development. I'm actually a CFRE certified fundraiser and executive, right? So getting access to that high level, right, is one. Two is it's time saving, right? So I've been doing this for a while. I know lots of tips and tricks and themes and trends and all of those things, right? Sometimes I get asked, like, hey, can you look at our fund development model? What does it look like from your perspective, right? So that's the third one is an outside independent perspective, right? So I will just come in or consultants like me will just say, tell me what this looks like. And I always talk to clients, I always say, can you please define success for me, right? So you start off with that, you know, as we enter this, what does it look like? What does success look like? You know, part of that is really in the industry, they're called discovery calls, right? When you meet with somebody, you get a referral, you have a chat about the lunch or do a Zoom. And we just say, how can I help, right? How can I help? And lots of times in those discovery calls, you're like, what I hear you saying is, right? I can certainly help with that. But as we talk this through a strategic thought partner, you may need some other services, right? So I think that's the other piece. And the other piece I want to mention to this is that it is cost-effective. So if you're having to hire somebody who has this expertise, you can just hire somebody temporarily, right? And we also are very nimble and being time-sensitive. Like, if you need something, then relatively quickly. If you need something more long-term, there is kind of, as we talk about this, you know, a consultant can be that high level like, let me do the analysis for you, let me give you your recommendations, let me present this to your board or your staff or shareholders, right? But consultants can also do what we call boots on the ground for limited engagement, right? So you see this with interim CEOs, interim CFOs, CDOs, chief development marketing officer. So there is a whole bunch of advantages on why not-profit could use consultants, right? Anyway, those are a few. You know, Jerry, I think it's a really interesting thing because the message that comes through to me is that it's an outside voice. And so it's not going to have maybe some of those political nuances or maybe it's not going to be somebody who's afraid to deliver bad news because it might impinge upon their job or their section or their department. And I also think that one of the things you said that really I think is fascinating is that you can bring a lens that maybe is bigger than the organization to the table. Like you mentioned the word trends or best practices, things that what's going on in the sector as a whole and not just, you know, what's going on in this small, like we're heads down in our own little cubicles. So I love that that piece of it. But my next question is kind of a doozy because this is a heavy lift. You're asking somebody to come in to do a lot and not everybody can do this. So how how are should we be looking at this, given that consultants are not going to always be the same? This is a really this is an interesting question that I do get asked, right? But I really think it depends on what you're looking for, right? Like if you're if you come to me and said, I need somebody to help me do your program evaluation, right? Like we have a program that we love, but it's you know, it's high cost, low impact versus something that is low cost, high impact, right? Having an outside consultant to that. So programming would be one or organization of development. So I think part of this is you have to look at a couple of factors. One is what is the expertise from the consultants, right? What is their practical background? Have they done it before? Have they been? Do they have any credentials that there would be helpful? And you said something that deserves repeating is we're an outside voice. So lots of times, you know, bringing a consultant kind of diffuses any kind of like, oh, they like this and they don't like that, you know, they know somebody consultants come in with a very clear objective, third person, right? We don't know any of the background. Frankly, I'm not sure it's important to us, but being able to bring that. So I say this just because the other thing you want to talk about consultants is temperament and communication, right? Like you have to make sure those are a good fit, right? Are you going to be a good fit for the organization, right? Are you going to be good to work with? How do you communicate? How often do you communicate, right? What does that look like in a collaborative manner, right? So that I think that, you know, when you talk about not all consultants say, that's a good thing. You wonder, right? If you're going to, you know, the consulting you may be using for governance may not be good for DEI work, right? Or fund development, right? And the other thing is, you know, like, let's just say you're an organization talking about nonprofit life cycles here and that growth period, right? The consultant you may be using to help you say, gosh, our program are blowing up. We love this. Oh, my God, that makes us, that makes our hearts sing. But oh, my God, we need more revenue, right? So the consultant has to be able to fit. Like I love growth, right? I have worked in organizations just like yours when I was a work, a true working professional, a nine to fiveer. Or I have worked with organizations like yours since I've been a consultant, like being able to just vet all of those, right? And the other thing that I would say is really ask around. Get some feedback. Well, then let's move on to that, because again, how do we go about vetting and and making sure that we're going to be able to bring forward that consultant that's the right fit because I'll tell you, Jerry, I don't know about you, but I notice organizations that they love consultants because somewhere along the line, they've had good relationships and they've seen it work and they understand the value and they love the bottom line. And then I see organizations that maybe didn't have a good experience and they're like, we don't do consultants, you know? And it's like it seems like they're polar opposites. And so how do we get to the middle by using those skills of vetting or checking out people? So if one of the viewers is saying, oh, my gosh, you know, we got, you know, we didn't have a good experience with a consultant. Now I can't get my boss or the board to do other consultants. Really, the question is what happened? Right? Like with anything like, you know, how, where was the breakdown? Right. So this is why it shows like this are really important. So you really want to, as I mentioned, you want to define success, right? But how to vet a consultant? You want to see kind of what their online professional presence is like through LinkedIn. Some consultants will have a website. Some won't, right? You want to maybe ask for other people. Like, like if I, I've vetted other consultants that I feel comfortable with. So if you say, oh, I need to talk to somebody like, I just got a request earlier this week asking if I need to Spanish with your consultants to validate. I go, matter of fact, I do, right? So consultants can refer other consultants, right? So that's another way. So referral is a really good way. The other thing that you could do potentially is ask who they worked with before. Right? If they maybe if maybe you're in healthy human services and they've only worked with, you know, animal welfare, ask like, hey, can you, you know, do you have a background that other transferable skill sets, right? So maybe asking for maybe who have you worked with. The other thing is asking like their ask the right questions. Like you would do like if you were hiring like a regular employee, right? Tell me about you. Tell me about what's important to you. Tell me if you worked in this space before. Tell me if you've had these situations. You know, so this is that discovery. We keep the tires, right? And if it's that's great. And if not, you can say we're also looking at other people, right? His ability is the consultant wants you to have the best experience. And it's not going to be you. It'll be somebody else, right? And that's totally fine, right? And this comes down to that whole thing. We're talking about scarcity versus abundance, right? For consultants, we pretty much live in abundance, right? We've had amazing life and work experiences. You know, we want to bring that to the table to help other people. People always ask like, what is how does it feel like not working like that traditional job you worked at for many years? I said, no, this gives me an opportunity to have much more people. Right? So anyway, those are come come of the tips I would probably say to maybe, you know, maybe that a consultant. You know, Jerry, you said something that I want to go back to, which I think is kind of interesting is, you know, we look at the nonprofit landscape, 1.8 million nonprofits registered in this country. And we generally and the federal government has kind of been the arbiter of this look at nine major sectors within that giant ecosystem of the nonprofit world. How do you feel about a consultant that can jump from one sector to another? So, for example, somebody that's worked in let's pick fundraising and they've done arts and culture. And then how good are they going to be able to move into, say, human services or higher education? What do you see as some of those opportunities? Or should we always stick within our our sector that we know? Oh, my goodness, by the way, very good question. I definitely think there are transferable skill sets and transferable experiences for consultants, right? Like the mechanics, if you're going to do a board retreat as an example, the mechanics are kind of the same, like how you've got it, what the process is going to look like, right? Fund development, right? Also, doesn't the the sector doesn't matter whether it's health and human services, animal rights, those circumstances, right? We know that roughly 80% or 60% of all people support nonprofits, right? So obviously there should always be a focus on people. So some of some of this stuff, I wouldn't wouldn't worry as much about unless you have some very, very specific industry things that you said, I need somebody who knows this, right? I need somebody who knows this. Otherwise, a lot of these are transferable skill sets, right? Well, we are in the industry that we have a toolbox, right? What kind of tools are your toolbox? So as you talk, like, oh, I can help you with this. I can help you with that. I can help you with this. The one thing about consultants is everything is customized. Based on that discovery call, you say, tell me what you need. And we'll lay out some options and we'll go back and forth. And then ultimately, we'll put those in the scope of work that we're going to talk about probably in a minute. And then you kind of go, OK, here we go. You are the right person. There is one of the things about consultants is there are consulting firms that are national and scope. There are some that are regional scope, right? They have an expertise and that's also important, right? So if there are some nuances to where your nonprofit is or they're providing services, right, that's important. Like I had a conversation last year with a nonprofit that was US based, but they did some of their work in another country, right? So understanding some of those nuances. And then there are just, you know, lots of nonprofit consultants like myself, right? Like I am Geronimo Consulting, right? So it's a value proposition with my background. So those are just some of the things you're looking for. Yeah, you know, it's so interesting, too, because I would imagine that one of the strengths that a consultant could have is coming from a different sector. You know, like because it seems to me and maybe I'm off on this that maybe somebody that is coming from that arts and culture can bring something new to a completely different sector, something that we wouldn't have thought about. Or it seems a little risky, but yet I love that you said transferable skill set. Yeah, I think we need to be looking at that. But also, I don't know, Jerry, it seems to me that we get so inundated with what we have to do minute by minute that we don't necessarily in the nonprofit sector open ourselves up to best practices or creative things going on outside our community in different regions, I mean, in different parts of the country. So I kind of like that idea of having somebody with some difference. Julie, you just also, you know, for the house, which is consultants for innovation, right? So we have been around a long time. We've seen a lot of things, they have you tried this and you tried that. The thing about consultants is they'll normally keep up with a lot of trends, right? You know, like online giving has doubled the last, you know, eight years. We're seeing that the number of individual donors is shrinking, but the donors that are staying are making larger gifts, right? So we stay on top of those those trends, right? So I can say, oh, based on what you're telling me, we can introduce some tools or we can use some concepts. So consultants can layer all of that together and customize that for you, right? So some people will say, oh, my gosh, you know, I have a special events background and now, you know, I have an opportunity to be maybe an annual giving officer, right? So you could potentially be on consulting to act as a thought partner, right? Like, hey, I've done, I've done individual giving. Why don't we talk about some practices and why don't we talk about timelines? Why don't we talk about resources and organizations or associations? So that that it comes back to that discovery. You know, we have a really interesting question that's come in and it's it dovetails to this this part of the conversation before we move on. And that is, do you see organizations using the same consultants over and over again and not being creative in engaging somebody new and different? And and how might we look at that in a different way on both sides? Yeah, you know, I see both. I have repeat clients that really like working with me, you know, for all sorts of reasons, but like, oh, my God, there's a trust level with you. You're a you're a no organization. You know, our board, you know, we like your approach and your philosophy. Right. We love your what your values tell us about our work together. Right. And but the other the flip side of that is, you know, if you get, you know, use one consultant and bring on another consultant, you get a completely different view, right? So you're like, oh, my God, like, this is another way to get matter. You're bringing other thoughts to the table or you're, you know, so I think it really kind of depends. However, I think the critical part here is how you bet they can vote, right? Having that very honest, transparent conversations like, please tell me about yourself. I'll tell you who we are as an organization. And let's see where their synergy is. And if there's not, that's OK. But if there is, that's also wonderful. So I can see advantage for both, although I do know I do know a lot of organizations that will use the same consultant because they're a little comfortable with them. And there's a level of success in that. Right. So that part of that in is I wanted and we don't have a lot of time, which is like mortifying how fast our time is gone. But talk to us about what we can expect for the the costs, like do people work on contract or hourly or what does this all look like? And then in that, talk about the scope of work, because to me, this is a really important concept that I think a lot of folks on both sides miss. So maybe frame it up with the scope of work and what that actually means and how it protects everyone. You're a great, great way. You can find consultants in several different ways. You can put an RFP request for proposal where you've already aligned out the work in detail with the central cost could be. So RFP is one, one could be being introduced or talking to somebody says, we really need help. Those are organic conversations offensive over coffee or lunch. So the way this works is you will get introduced. You will have that discovery call where you ask all the right questions back and forth under synergy. You're like, OK, how do we move forward? OK, in the industry, it's called the scope of work, right? So the scope of work will detail the deliverables and have the timeline and have the cost, right? And the scope of work could also outline a project or several projects, right? As couples work to be, we want you to do an assessment or a fund development to make some recommendations. We would like you then to kind of present those to our board directors. I mean, it could be a whole bunch of pieces to that. What I love about the scope of work is it's very black and white about there's no ambiguity, right? So you say, here's how we define success. Here's the timeline. Here's the cost. So when you talk about the scope of work, you can do a couple of things. One is those projects I just mentioned, you could say, here's the flat fee for those, right? And you're going to be done by X and the deliverables are going to be X, Y, and Z. That's one option. The other option is you could just pay somebody by the hour, right? The third option could be retainer, right? Like, oh, my gosh, you know, what if we brought you on for a four month engagement at XXX a month with so many hours, right? So this is the innovation of how it works. And that's why the discovery is so important. And what I see a lot of people doing on the scope of work saying, hey, we're going to do probably two scopes of works, but this is the first one. Once we get done with this, based on what that tells us, that will determine the next scope of work. OK, so I like that. And I've got to say, I haven't seen that very often. And I think that's really smart because it's kind of a natural issue and that you're bringing somebody on because you don't know the answers, right? You don't know the journey that you need to take. And so maybe that is just a really smart way to make it achievable, equitable and also making it everybody accountable for what those outcomes are going to be. Oh, for sure, right? I mean, I think that there's no downside to using a consultant as long as you define what success looks like, right? And consultants like me, we have conversations all the time. I get a lot of friends of friends or I get people I know in the industry. They said, do you have a few minutes? I said, of course, right? And I said, tell me what's going on? How can I help? And if I can't help you, let me let me give you some resources, right? Let me help you, right? Navigate that, you know, and sometimes as nonprofit leaders, we're so caught up in like the day to day, right? And then everyone will pull our heads up and kind of go, oh, my God, like, who are we in six months or two years? Or do we need to think about a feasibility for a capital campaign for expansion of services to meet somebody? You know, and lots of times you'll see consultants when there's like a change in programming or in that growth model, like, what's next? What's next? And how do we how do we go around doing that? Right? Are we in the right space, doing the right things? Right? So the use of consultants really is I said this is the top of our thing that really part of the ecosystem, you know, of nonprofits. Yeah, I think it's a it's something that we shouldn't be afraid of and that it's just especially in a time right now where we're looking at different, you know, are we growing? Are we shrinking? Are we navigating to new things? I kind of think it's a good idea to look at this resource and helping us to determine where our next journey is because it's such a fascinating thing. Geronimo, Jerry Diaz, CFRE. Wow, you are a rock star, my friend. So fun to be on here. I cannot believe I'm sure you hear this every guest. It's been a half hour. How did that even happen? You know what, Jerry? This is the truth, honest to goodness. It goes by fast for me, too. Oh, and, and, you know, and Jared, Jared will say the same thing. A lot of times we're not just, you know, we're not making this up. We really are like, holy moly, where did the time go? So I think that's indicative of how, you know, we love our guests and how curious we are about things. And how we have these conversations. And so you, my friend, have been a part of that. Hey, check out Jerry Diaz, CFRE, on his website, Geronimo. I started to say, Geronimo. GeronimoConsulting.org, Geronimo, as I like to call him. What an amazing mind and temperament for our sector. And I really believe, Jerry, you are one of the wise men of our sector. Not just in my community. I've seen your work. I've seen your work well before I ever knew you. And it's really been cool to watch from afar and admire you and in your talents. So thank you very, very much. Thank you, everybody, for joining, tuning in today and have a great piece of the day and. Hey, you know what, Jerry, we're going to have a good day because you've taught us something and that is an amazing, amazing thing. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. Jerry Ransom, the nonprofit nerd herself, will be back with us shortly. And we are so, so very, very grateful for the sponsorships that help us navigate now starting our fourth year of the nonprofit show. And our supporters include include Blumerang, American Nonprofit Academy, your part time controller, nonprofit thought leader, Fundraising Academy at National University, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Nerd and Nonprofit Tech Talk. Again, Jerry, this has been fabulous. You've revved me up. You've given me confidence about this concept and this resource that I think we need to be taking more seriously and really doing it without fear and understanding how it can really improve our mission, vision and values in the nonprofit sector. So thank you very much. Welcome. It's been a lot of fun. Hey, everybody, as we like to end every episode of the nonprofit show, we like to end with this message to stay well so you can do well. See you back here. Jerry, thank you so much.