'Nonprofit Consulting Playbook' Are You Ready to Strike Out on Your Own?

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

If you were looking to embark on a new career or a new phase of your current one (or if you were looking to reinvigorate your passion), wouldn’t it be fine to find yourself at a cocktail party with about 25 colleagues whose advice you could seek between bites of brie on crackers and sips of chardonnay?

Sure it would! And while a new book by consultants Linda Lysakowski and Susan Schaefer doesn’t come with a carafe of wine, it does come with the best part of the cocktail party scenario: the advice.

In “The Nonprofit Consulting Playbook,” Lysakowski and Schaefer gathered 25 nonprofit consultants — many whose names you already know — to compile the best information that someone looking to start his or her own consultancy needs. Contributing authors include:

Helen B. Arnold
Betsy Baker
Jean Block
Jan F. Brazzell
Ellen Bristol
Pamela A. Cook
Michelle Cramer
Bob Crandall
Marti Fischer
Gayle L. Gifford
Mary Hiland
Margaret M. Holman
Simone P. Joyaux
Alexander Macnab
Stephen C. Nill
Meri K. Pohutsky
Sandy Rees
Eugene A. Scanlan
Martha H. Schumacher
M. Kent Stroman
Justin Tolan
Sandra Migani Wall
Deborah Ward

Here, we talk with the editors about the book and the challenges of going into business as a consultant to the nonprofit sector.

FundRaising Success: Why did you feel the time was right for this book just now?
Linda Lysakowski: There are so many new people entering the field of consulting to nonprofits, and just as with all small businesses, many of them fail within the first two years. So we wanted to offer these new startup businesses some tools to get them off to the right start.

At the same time, many long-time consultants have felt the pinch of a poor economy and need some tools to revitalize themselves and their businesses.