Most organizations undertaking strategic planning choose to work with a consultant. But how can you find the right consultant for your organization?
We recommend treating the consultant selection like an interview or hiring process. Create a short-list of consultants, set up calls with each firm, then ask a set of thoughtful and consistent questions. Most consultants offer free consultations just for this purpose.
To get you started, here are some of the best questions clients have asked Funding for Good over the years.
What to Look for When Interviewing Strategic Planning Consultants
When interviewing strategic planning consultants, the goal is to understand:
- What the consultant’s approach to strategic planning is, including the models and tools they use.
- Whether the consultant brings experience that is relevant to your organization and its needs. For example, if your organization is a nonprofit, a firm that has never worked with nonprofits might not be the right fit.
- How the consultant facilitates stakeholder engagement and builds consensus. This is essential for successful implementation once the plan is complete. So you want a consultant who has facilitation training and hands-on experience.
- What the full strategic planning process and deliverables will include. Consultants should be able to clearly articulate their process and the deliverables you should expect (such as a retreat, a written document, a stakeholder survey, etc.).
- What the full cost for the proposed scope of work will be. This may not be shared during an initial consultation, as the consultant is also asking you questions so they can prepare a scope of work. However, all pricing information should be included in the scope of work the consultant submits post-call.
9 Questions to Ask Strategic Planning Consultants
- Have you worked with organizations similar to ours, including sector, size (annual budget and staff size), and growth cycle?
- Can you walk us through your proposed planning process, including roles, responsibilities, timeline, and outcomes?
- What strategic planning model do you use? Is the model evidence-based?
- What is your philosophy of stakeholder engagement?
- How would you describe your facilitation style?
- When facilitating planning sessions, how do you balance the competing needs of ensuring full participation, building consensus, and navigating conflicts?
- What do we, as organizational leaders, need to do to be successful in our strategic planning process?
- What are the most common challenges you’ve seen organizations like ours struggle with during the strategic planning process?
- What is included in your proposed fee, and what are potential add-on costs?
If you are interviewing multiple consultants, be sure you are asking the same questions of each one, rather than getting caught up in other conversations. Otherwise, you might realize you missed key data too late in the process!
Avoid Surprises When Selecting a Consultant
There’s only so much you can learn about a potential consultant during the interview process. But there are red flags we recommend looking out for:
- Inability to provide support for potential follow-up services, such as designing implementation plans or facilitating regular strategic plan review sessions.
- Inability to articulate the approach to core strategic planning activities, such as facilitation, stakeholder engagement, and consensus-building.
- Unprofessional or incomplete scope of work or project proposal.
- Lack of experience or unwillingness to provide previous client referrals.
- Experience limited to organizations that are very different from your own. For example, if you’re a small nonprofit and the consultant has only worked with Fortune 500 companies. For nonprofits, we recommend choosing consultants with direct experience in nonprofit strategic planning specifically.
- Unclear pricing structure with excessive add-on fees. For example, does the consultant charge a day rate for travel?
Next Steps: Evaluating Strategic Planning Proposals
Once you’ve interviewed strategic planning consultants, you will want to request scopes of work or proposals from your top one or two choices.
Note that requesting scopes of work from many consultants is asking folks to do a lot of unnecessary work. We recommend requesting proposals from your top one to two choices. If those proposals don’t meet your criteria, then reconsider other consultants on your list.
You can use the same questions above to also evaluate the strategic planning proposals you receive. You’re looking for consistency with your interview as well as fit for your organization, clarity of proposed work and roles, and pricing transparency.
Funding for Good specializes in strategic planning for nonprofit and government organizations. You can learn more about our approach and book a free consultation with our team to assess whether we might be a good fit for your organization.
