Setting Up a Successful Collaboration with Consultants
December 31, 2016
At some point, you may need to hire a consultant to help you write a proposal. The consultant may be a subject-matter expert who can work with you on strategy, a grant writer who can write the content and manage the proposal process, or a former government or foundation staff member who can help with the review process and ensure your proposal is responsive to the funder’s needs.
To avoid issues during the proposal process, before you contact a potential consultant to discuss the opportunity, you’ll need to do some preparatory work. This prep work will help ensure that the initial conversation with the consultant covers all bases regarding what will be required; it will also help the consultant by providing enough information to make an informed decision on whether she can meet your expectations. Omit this preparatory step, and you may end up with the consultant unable to participate at the required level or within the required timeframe.
THINKING OF HIRING A CONSULTANT? HERE’S YOUR HOMEWORK.
TIME
Sketch out the proposal calendar so you know roughly at what stage(s) of the proposal process, and for how long, you’ll need the consultant to be involved. Depending on the type of proposal and the consultant’s expertise and envisioned role, the duration could range from a few days to a few months. Before contacting a potential consultant, ideally, you should have a sense of the expected release date for the opportunity announcement. When you speak with the consultant, you can review the preliminary proposal schedule with her to determine whether she anticipates any scheduling conflicts.
MATERIALS
Gather background materials to share with the consultant to help her evaluate the consultancy and come up to speed on the proposed project. If the pre-solicitation or request for applications (RFA) has already been released, please send the consultant a copy.
Other things to share include:
Copies of your organization’s latest annual report, mission statement, and capacity statement;
A list of recent grants your organization has received (donor, amount, project period, project name) relevant to the opportunity under consideration; and
The bios of your organization's senior leaders and technical staff.
For a rebid or follow-on project (i.e., continuance of a currently funded project), you should share a copy of the last proposal, copies of all project reports submitted to the donor, and any publications produced during the current project.
PROCESS
Decide how you would like the collaboration with the consultant to work. Unless things are spelled out, the consultant could assume all she will be doing is discussing the proposal’s development with technical staff and senior leadership on an “on call” basis.
To set the proper expectations, which should ultimately be incorporated into the consultant agreement, some questions to consider are:
Do you want the consultant in your office every day during business hours, or are you comfortable with the consultant working remotely and communicating with you via email and conference calls? If this will be a long-distance collaboration, do you anticipate meeting with the consultant regularly at set times, or will the meetings be ad hoc?
Should the consultant plan to attend any in-person planning meetings, such as the kickoff meeting for the proposal process? If so, do you have an idea when these meetings might take place and where they will be held?
If you are hiring a consultant to act as an expert reviewer and strategist (as opposed to a hands-on grant writer) are you open to receiving the consultant’s feedback in any form, verbal or written? Or would you prefer the consultant to provide everything in writing? In addition to written feedback on proposal drafts, possible work products could include a summary of trends in the project's area of focus or an analysis of the donor’s current projects, interests, and recent funding decisions.
Will the consultant need access to equipment (e.g., webcam, Windows-based computer) or services such as Skype to connect with you and your colleagues during the proposal process?
If you think through these three major areas of time, materials, and process, you’ll go into the initial meeting with the consultant being clear on what you need. This clarity will help you articulate your expectations for the consultant position, which, in turn, will help the consultant make an informed decision about whether she is the right fit for the scope of work.
Most grant writers have been asked at some point to “massage” unfavorable facts into preferred ones, or have seen their fact-based prose reworked by others into something that has the essence of truth but is not strictly true, or is at least less transparent. To some, this may sound like business as usual and what you need to do to win a grant. However, these little acts of truth-stretching, which can take the form of exaggerations, omissions, and misrepresentations, can exact a cost.