Have you ever bought a template online for your business? Maybe it was a website template, an email marketing template, a Canva template, or even social media templates.
If you answered yes, you’re not alone. Digital products are big business—generating billions online each year.
Let’s take a look at how nonprofit consultants can use templates to increase income and client satisfaction.
Creating a Template as a Product as a Consultant
To create your own sellable template, you’ll want to start by identifying a clear and pressing need your ideal clients have.
For example, here at Funding for Good, we were working with a lot of nonprofits that were struggling with board engagement. Board roles and responsibilities weren’t clear. Executive directors and board chairs weren’t being effective in getting board members back on track. Board members were disconnected because they felt their expertise and time weren’t being used well. It was a spiral of frustration for our clients.
Recognizing this was a consistent problem, we developed tools, like a board of directors job description, that we could use across multiple clients. Because the tools were so effective, we decided to turn these tools into templates that even more nonprofits could use on their own. That’s how templates like our Board of Directors Engagement Form started and eventually grew into our Board Template Bundle.
Today, we sell these templates on our website (for passive income) and use them with our board development clients. This enhances the client experience, gives clients tools they can use even after our work together is done, and saves us, as consultants, plenty of time.
Creating a Template as a Service as a Consultant
The creation of a custom template itself can also be a service you provide to clients. The most common example of this is grant template creation.
A grant template is a full grant application written to cover the most common questions funders ask. This grant proposal is not written for any specific funder or to meet any specific funding deadline. Instead, it’s designed to be adapted for use with multiple funders. Having a grant template makes future grant writing easier and more successful because clients aren’t starting from scratch each time. Instead, they have lots of high-quality text to draw from.
Grant consultants can craft grant templates for clients as a standalone service or as part of a longer-term contract, such as a 12-month retainer or a bundle of related services. Both approaches benefit the client and the consultant.
For example, say you love grant writing but hate scrambling on grant deadlines. Providing a standalone grant template service could make your work much more enjoyable because you are setting the timelines—and ensuring plenty of time for clients to engage in the process without feeling rushed.
How to Start Creating Income-Producing Templates as a Consultant
The first step in creating income from templates is being laser-focused on client needs. Where do you see clients consistently struggling? Where would an easy-to-use template help them overcome or better manage persistent challenges?
Take a minute and jot some ideas down. Remember, you don’t have to create a template to sell as a product or service tomorrow. It might take you a few weeks or months to identify that perfect tool that will help your clients tackle thorny challenges with greater ease.
