Nonprofit Builder: how to vet consultants?
Our goal with the Nonprofit Builder is to create open marketplace for nonprofit consultants. A key challenge is how to vet consultants, because the essential expectation is the quality of service. Users — nonprofits and foundations — need to be able to trust that the consultants are good.
Everybody knows of the wonderful consultant who helped a nonprofit get to the next level. But everybody also hears that story of a nightmare consultant who has been wreaking havoc in one nonprofit after another… surely the Builder needs a reliable way of weeding the latter out.
The traditional approach to vetting is through reviews. Sounds easy, but its not without problems. How to get user reviews that are objective, transparent, reliable… its challenging.
First, there is the problem of self-censorship, meaning that a client will purposely refrain from giving a frank and critical review, fearing possible negative repercussions. The nonprofit world is a small world, everybody knows each other, and someone too outspoken and frank in his or her critique may make unnecessary enemies. And giving a negative review will help to inform others but not directly benefit its author. So why to stick one’s neck out?
In my own experience of developing the Nonprofit Builder, I worked with developers from a marketplace called Codeable. These developers were vetted, and most of them had dozens of 5-star reviews. And the were generally good, but not perfect by any means. One was often late and forgetful. Yet I consistently gave him five star reviews. Why? Because he was very cheap and as I as wanted to work with him in the future, I did not want him to turn away from accepting my projects. I later realised that having an impeccable 5 star review average is super important for these developers, I once dared to give a 4-star review and the developer was very offended indeed! This experience has taught me that reviews have their limits.
Second, reviews can unfairly damage the reputation of the consultant. Just as there are consultants from hell, there are also clients from hell, who are unable to appreciate what the consultant had to offer, or who are antagonised by hearing a truth that the consultant may have told them.. and who’ll give a bad review as a result. Or perhaps the consultant simply wasn’t a good match for that particular organisation. Or maybe he (she) was pressured to take on a challenge that others ran away from, or a type of organisation he (she) did not yet have experience with — should he(she) be then punished for taking on a challenge, accepting a risk, and trying to grow? That wouldn’t be fair. Organisational development is messy, and its hard to see clearly enough through the mess and write an objective review.
As a result, its possible that established consultants, who already have a strong reputation and a client base, may not want to join such marketplace. Why should they open themselves to unfair critique and jeopardise everything they have built?
Well, last year we interviewed nonprofits leaders about their experiences with consultants, and in particular we asked them about the information they needed to take a decision about a consultant. And we learned that reviews only come third place in terms of importance:
- Most important is an endorsement by a respected person, whose opinion you value. Our field research last year showed that this is what nonprofits value the most. A detailed review is not even necessary — simply knowing that a consultant has been endorsed by a respected peer is enough to trust him or her.
- Second most important, a clear explanation of the service and its benefit. Our research last year showed that many consultants are actually very poor at explaining their services which are often described in an opaque way.
- Thirdly, in terms of importance, come the reviews. Ideally these should be detailed enough to form a genuine idea of the performance of the consultant. But they are not the most important.
So then, how to apply this learning to the Nonprofit Builder project? Well, here is what we propose:
- Start small, grow gradually, starting with consultants who are already knows or who have been recommended by others. This is how its working out in practice: we have built a first version for Oak Foundation for in-house use by their grant-makers, with the idea that it will be shared with other interested foundations and their grantees, each bringing its Rolodex of tried-and-tested consultants.
- Clarity on how well we know the consultant. On the Nonprofit Builder, we mention who referred each consultant to us, and the level of experience we have with the consultant (our taxonomy: newly joined but promising, 1–2 positive experiences, strongly confirmed)
- Review interventions, not consultants. These reviews should be detailed, describe aptly the intervention that took place, describe the baseline, discuss the challenges, extract any lessons learned. A review of the consultant’s work would be a part of that review, but not the focus. Ideally the review would be good enough to use as a case study.
- Use a human facilitator. Such a person would be necessary to help the nonprofits write high quality reviews, and edit them to a consistent level of clarity and objectivity. A facilitator would also be able to check in with the nonprofits and consultants informally throughout the process — ensuring fair and genuine reviews, and mediating any problems. Of course, the facilitator would remove a “bad” consultant from the database, but in a discrete and fair way without drama.
Using a facilitator will actually also allow to build a database of lessons-learned, track impact, and keep on top of trends in organisational development, thus making the Nonprofit Builder more than a marketplace — a center of learning, exchange and collaboration for nonprofits, foundations and consultants (indeed, in our research, nonprofit consultants have reported feeling isolated, and would welcome to be connected to their peers via the Builder).
Suggestions? Please post your comments below.
