Strategies for effectively presenting the case to hire a grant consultant to executive leadership.
You’ve defined your nonprofit's needs and identified a grant consultant as the key to unlocking financial sustainability and mission impact. Now, you need the support and approval from your executive leadership. In this blog post, we’ll share strategies for effectively presenting the case to hire a grant consultant to your nonprofit’s leadership.
Position Hiring a Grant Consultant as a Strategic Investment
A grant consultant can help your organization manage its grant program and approach funders confidently and consistently. This is a strategic investment in your organization’s future, providing financial sustainability through grant research, writing, and management.
Take a holistic view of your organization, from mission and vision to strategic plan. Align your pitch with your organization’s strategic plan and showcase how a grant consultant can help your organization reach its goals.
Highlight Your Nonprofit’s Grantseeking Challenges
Ensure your executive leadership understands the internal challenges your organization faces. You are the expert in your organization's day-to-day challenges. Communicate these clearly and explain how they affect your organization’s ability to achieve mission impact and financial sustainability. Highlight the specific solutions a grant consultant can provide to address your organization's challenges.
Common challenges we see include time and capacity. These challenges can lead organizations to spend less time building relationships with funders, researching funding opportunities, and submitting funding requests. Deadlines may be missed, and crucial funding may be lost. These challenges can leave staff feeling overwhelmed and unsupported, which may cause staff turnover.
Connect Your Challenges to Grant Consultant Solutions
When pitching a grant consultant, connect your specific challenges to the support a grant consultant provides. Remember, a grant consultant can do more than write grants for your organization. They can ensure staff have the tools and support to reach their full potential and strengthen their organization.
Our comprehensive services ensure your organization has the tools, resources, and coaching to secure funding. Our services can save your organization time with efficient project management. We can increase your organization’s capacity by allowing staff to focus on executing mission-driven programming and services. We can help you identify new funding opportunities with access to cost-prohibitive prospect research tools. We can guide you on how to build relationships with funders. A grant consultant can address all of these challenges and more.
Present the Cost of Hiring a Grant Consultant
Executive leadership is responsible for the organization's financial health. The cost of hiring a grant consultant will be a key concern of leadership. Root the cost of hiring a grant consultant in reality by obtaining proposals and vetting consultants.
Depending on your position in the organization or relationship with executive leadership, you may require approval to begin conversations with grant consultants. These initial meetings are essential to build support from executive leadership throughout the discovery process by highlighting the true cost. Ask questions and gain perspective on what executive leadership would like to see from a grant consultant proposal and questions or concerns they may have. By understanding the priorities of executive leadership, you’ll be prepared to ask the right questions and identify the right consultant for your organization.
Learn the process of engaging a grant writer and find tips to prepare for each stage in our blog, Navigating the Process of Engaging a Grant Writer.
Leadership will also benefit from understanding the consultant’s history of success. Request case studies, testimonials, and references to demonstrate the consultant’s effectiveness and the potential return on investment for your organization.
For every $1 our clients spend, we raise $12 for their mission.
A grant consultant can also be highly cost-effective for your organization, especially compared to the cost of hiring a grant writer as a full-time employee. This includes reduced overhead and benefit costs that can be a significant long-term investment. In addition, a consultant's flexibility allows your organization to respond quickly to funding needs and scale your contract up or down accordingly.
Beyond the cost, establishing key performance indicators for the engagement will ensure leadership that you’ve considered success measures to ensure a fruitful partnership with clear goals.
You recognize the impact a grant consultant can have on your organization’s financial future, advancing your grant program from research to submission. By following these steps, you can craft a compelling pitch that will resonate with your nonprofit leadership and clearly demonstrate the value of hiring a grant consultant.
Showcase your understanding of the organization’s long-term goals and position a grant consultant as a strategic investment to help achieve them. Highlight the challenges your nonprofit currently faces and explain how a consultant can offer personalized solutions. Finally, present the cost and outline how you’ll measure the partnership's success to ensure the investment delivers tangible results.
With the approval of your nonprofit leadership, we’ll be excited to partner with you and help your organization Bloom. Contact us to learn how we can support your organization.
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