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Nonprofit Consulting: A Powerful Option for Organizations
Episode 6712th September 2022 • Connected Philanthropy • Foundant Technologies
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This episode covers important details you should know if you are considering hiring a nonprofit consultant or becoming one.

Amanda Pearce, CFRE

A grant writing expert, executive and development coach, fundraising consultant, and national fundraising trainer, Mandy Pearce, launched Funding for Good, Inc. in 2009 to equip organizations with the skills and tools needed to become successful and sustainable. Mandy has taken her passion and expertise for fundraising to the development field and shared it with individuals and organizations for over 23 years through executive coaching, strategic and development planning, capital campaign planning, seminars, and specialized consulting programs. Mandy’s dynamic teaching style brings thousands of people annually to her presentations at conventions, trainings, and workshops, in person and online. Her business model is centered on her key values: honesty, efficiency, direct communication, and bringing dollars to local communities.

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Transcripts

Tammy Tilzey:

Hello and welcome to our Connected Philanthropy podcast. Today we are privileged to have Mandy Pearce of Funding for Good with us today. And Mandy brings such a wealth of knowledge of consulting and nonprofit strategy and and working with boards. We are so privileged to have her with us and we are going to be talking about nonprofit consulting today.

Tammy Tilzey:

And we have all I came up with several questions to pick her brain. So we will be diving in. Thanks so much for joining us today, Mandy.

Amanda Pearce:

Thanks for having me.

Tammy Tilzey:

Well, let's start off. We've had you on as our educational webinar guest and podcast and then you've written several blogs. But I'd love to give you a chance to tell us a little bit about yourself and how you your journey to getting where you are today.

Amanda Pearce:

Well, so I usually tell people that I was scammed into success. I lost my job when the economy crashed in 2008 and nine and had always been thinking I wanted to start a business and never really gotten personally motivated to do it. And then a friend told me to post something about my grant writing services on oh, what was the name of that?

Amanda Pearce:

Craigslist. And I did. And someone reached out to me a couple of days later from California asking me to step in and be a fill in instructor for a recovery grant funding workshop that they were hosting in Charlotte because the instructor was out medical leave with a family and couldn't make it. Long story short, I ended up saying I would do it.

Amanda Pearce:

It was very short notice. It didn't really have time to read the contracts. It was all virtual. I get to Charlotte, they had boxes of materials there and 20 people showed up who had each paid $500 for the seminar from all over the country and there were no receipts. People wouldn't report on my phone calls or emails once I arrived and everybody there eventually at the end of day one of two days, decided that it was a big scam, which it was, but I didn't know it at the time, and they thought I was in on it, which I wasn't, but they didn't know that either.

Amanda Pearce:

And my hotel room was covered, but that was it. So I ended up not getting paid. No one is able to get receipts or anything. And so as I started doing research about it, when I left, I found out that this particular company had been doing this for a decade, and all over the country it was like virtual.

Amanda Pearce:

There was no way for them to track down. They didn't have a storefront. They always use like telephone numbers of restaurants or burner phones or whatever. They processed cards virtually. And it was just it was kind of a nightmare. And there wasn't anywhere to follow, like Better Business Bureau claims, because they didn't have, like, a legit business or storefront.

Amanda Pearce:

And so it was a company that had had a play on another very popular real company that was in California that we would all know the name of if I told you what it was. But I don't want to, like, put any bad vibes out there. So they took a real reputable company and sort of just changed the name enough that people didn't know any different anyway.

Amanda Pearce:

So when I got home, I had the materials from that event on my dining room table for about three months, and I eventually said, You know what I can teach you, Grant writing workshop. I can do that. So I said, maybe I should just promote materials together because their materials were fabulous. And so for three months, I put together my first PowerPoint presentation because I'd never done that in college.

Amanda Pearce:

We didn't have to use that tool or whatever. And I taught my first grant writing and research two day workshop in January of 2010 and had 40 something people in the room and had a huge success. It was, I think I charged like $225 a person or something crazy. And then I did another one in February that was successful.

Amanda Pearce:

And then I started doing some for private nonprofit hospitals. And that's really kind of how Funding for Good eventually came to be, because my first business name was Grant Cruise. So as Grant consultation, research, education and writing services, and then we eventually did more than just grants. We transitioned the name over to Funding for Good. And so that's how I, that's how I got started.

Amanda Pearce:

So for three years behind the scenes, I built my business. I had a full time job eventually, as I built the business. And in 2014, I went full time in October with Funding for Good. So I had it since 2009 and then went full time with it in 2014. That's how I got started.

Tammy Tilzey:

Wow. What a rich story that I never knew that is. And now what do you enjoy so the most? About what you do?

Amanda Pearce:

The company has transitioned a lot, so like I said, we first started just all grants. It was grant writing, grant research, grant education, grant reviews, grading templates. I mean, all the things grants for several years, that's all we did. And then we kind of transitioned to more fundraising support and lots of education around all fundraising things like how to write fundraising plans and how to build a board that would fundraise and how to, you know, all the fundraising things, how to do direct mail, how to do online, giving, whatever.

Amanda Pearce:

And so then we kind of got we focused a lot into board development there for a while. And in the past three years we've really shifted our focus to the foundational work of strategic planning for development and education and then development work with how do you write a development plan? What makes it successful? How does it align with your strategic plan?

Amanda Pearce:

How does it align with your budget? All those pieces. So we've really gone from a place of working with small startups and founders way back in the day to now. We really work with organizations that are a little bit more established, a little bit more rote, not robust, but just they have a little bit more sustainability, if you will, and they're looking for long term sustainability and they're ready to build their capacity.

Amanda Pearce:

So last year in the year before that, I started talking with folks that wanted to be consultants and do what I do. And I said, You know what? I love that. I love helping people build their businesses. And so I started working with people one on one, and then I said I should teach a webinar. And then I started teaching a webinar and then I started teaching a bootcamp where I would work for 60 days with other consultants to help them either start a business, take a business to the next level, or go full time with it, or grow one that was full time to whatever that next level is.

Amanda Pearce:

They're looking for. That is like my passion project and what I really, really love to do. I could just sit in my office all day and talk to people that want to start businesses or grow their businesses. In the world of nonprofit consulting. And so that's really me personally. But as a company, we've really honed our focus in on strategic planning and then from that once a once a well-written strategic plan is in place.

Amanda Pearce:

We like to help folks with their development plans and their budgets and all the pieces that you can use to implement that strategic plan and grow your organization.

Tammy Tilzey:

Great. I that is so interesting how your organization has evolved. And and I bet that that matches, you know, sometimes when people are like, okay, we need to a nonprofit needs some more funding, let's just write a grant. Let's get a grant. But really, when they come to you or to a consultant, a fundraising consultant, and ask, you know, we need help with this grant, or can you help us apply for grants?

Tammy Tilzey:

What do you see? AS Okay, what do they really need to take a look at and do? And and if you are that small nonprofit, what what should they really be asking for as a package instead of just a short term? Let's get some grants in there. Do you have if you've seen that enough, what advice would you give them?

Amanda Pearce:

So we really built our tool kit for folks around that when we first started. And we we have a grant readiness assessment this free on our website. And so we send people there a lot and we say, hey, if you're going into these questions, if you have all these items in hand, you're probably ready to write grants for people that are already writing grants.

Amanda Pearce:

We still want that assessment to make sure they have all the tools, but we then say, What's your current needs list? Because a lot of people don't have that. And how does it align with your current strategic plan? Right. Are you just randomly pulling stuff out of the hat and be like, oh, shiny object I this today? Or is it, oh, we need this thing because we identified it and it's in this year's goals for the strategic plan and we should be moving towards that.

Amanda Pearce:

We have that conversation of where does the need this list draw from? You know, is it really strategically written or is it just shiny object syndrome kind of list put together from somebody that got excited? And then we can have a conversation about, okay, so once you have the list, how much does the item cost? When do you need the dollars in hand?

Amanda Pearce:

How much have you already got committed? What are your other methods of raising these dollars? Because it can't just come from grants. And so we sit down and we have some of those more strategic conversations of what is your full circle fundraising look like in your development plan? What are the strategies for bringing in these dollars? Obviously, the answer can always be grants.

Amanda Pearce:

And so we have those more in-depth conversations with folks to make sure that they have a plan in place and not just a I am going to not eat any carbs for five weeks and I'm going to lose this much weight and then they can't keep it off. Right? We don't want to try a grant to get money to day and then not have a sustainable project going forward.

Amanda Pearce:

We want to make sure that we're really creating a plan for folks to be successful and maintain that.

Tammy Tilzey:

Great. Yeah. And as I'm thinking about our audience, there's funders out there, nonprofits, there's consultants. And you mentioned your current passion of helping people build their business now around nonprofits and consulting. And so I know because we are sponsoring it, Foundant is, it's an exciting conference coming up in a nonprofit consulting conference. And just with the great resignation people the shift people shifting I know from all of our audiences there are such capable people that may be wanting to expand their offerings for nonprofits to help them take what they've learned as a funder, as a grant professional or wherever their journey has led them and try their try their shot at being a consultant, or maybe they already have started and want to get to the next level. Can you talk just a little bit about what that conference is about?

Amanda Pearce:

Sure. Yeah, we're super thrilled that Foundant Technologies is our lead sponsor for this year and it's our inaugural year for the event. We're thrilled. Holly Rustic, Mazarine Treyz, and myself are coordinating the event. We have 12 amazing speakers and 12 amazing sessions, which means 12 hours of wonderful content. It's all virtual and for anybody who can't make it live, you'll be getting recordings that you can listen to along with all the handouts through December 31st.

Amanda Pearce:

So anybody who can't join us live because you're on summer vacation or you've got something else going on, we will give you plenty of time to watch the recording. So it's not a bad deal to go ahead and get your seat. But yeah, we've got some really fun topics to talk about, like how building effective partnerships will help you grow your business, how you want to go from, how you want to go from building passive income streams that you can actually make money from.

Amanda Pearce:

When you're ready to go from making money working all the time, having to be involved in every every single aspect of a product or service or working on all of the client. And you're ready to go, oh, now I want to go to passive income streams. What does that look like in passive and recurring or different? So we're having that conversation.

Amanda Pearce:

We're talking about conflict resolution as a consultant. We're talking about what other cool things are we talking about? We're going to talk about how to go from hourly to project based billing. So a lot of new consultants are like, Oh, we've got to keep track of every hour we spend working with the client. We're going to build them just for those hours.

Amanda Pearce:

And it's really inefficient and not really what most consultants will suggest to you. So we're going to talk about that and give you some tools around what to do differently. We're going to talk about how to have an amazing client experience, like we talk about donor relations in the nonprofit world, but we don't think about client relations. You know?

Amanda Pearce:

And so there's just a lot of cool topics and you can learn more about it at the website nonprofit consulting conference dot com so it's super easy there we we we got the URL for that first but yeah we're excited to you know, we have a capacity of 500 for the conference. So we are we're working our way up that list.

Amanda Pearce:

So we encourage people to book early, but bring a friend and join us. It should be good. Tammy, you're actually you're presenting a topic there as well. So you're going to be one of our presenters this year.

Tammy Tilzey:

Yes, I'm excited to talk about, you know, what I've learned from my past experience in services and consulting, as well as working with with organizations such as Foundant Technologies to partner and and serve our joint clients right you know that that have needs from from both of us so I'll put that in the show notes for sure to let people know about it.

Tammy Tilzey:

We are very excited that you're fitting this need that we see also in the market. So thinking of just where you've gathered some of your experience, have you ever partnered with funders in the past to provide training, consulting or something else for nonprofits? And if so.

Amanda Pearce:

Not so? We do a ton of we do a ton of webinars, which we partner with you guys on webinars and, you know, Boomerang and Grant Station and Candide and all the, all the people. And so they sometimes those are free and sometimes those are paid, but they bring us in to, to cover a specific topic. But then we've also partnered with organizations like Community Foundations around the country or like there's a center for a vital community out in Sheridan, Wyoming, that we've worked with and a lot of organizations like that that want to bring specific training to their community, whether it's building dynamic boards or whether it's all about fundraising, and there's a boot

Amanda Pearce:

camp involved or grant writing, research and workshops. So they usually bring us in and then they get the community nonprofits to come in and participate in those training. So it's either low or no cost for the attendees and then the the organization, the foundation, the whoever supports our fees so that we can present to more people at one time, which is awesome.

Amanda Pearce:

So yeah, we love those kind of partnerships and are happy to do them when and wherever that we can. We have a lot of folks that will reach out to us for webinar series for their associations. So maybe it's an RFP or maybe it's a small business center. We work with the Small Business Development centers around the country a lot in North Carolina and some even in other states.

Amanda Pearce:

So, you know, the through the community colleges, but they provide education to help grow small businesses and nonprofits are small business. So we offer lots and lots of trainings through them as well. I think the first year, the pandemic, we did 99 webinars online, so we were partnering with people from all over the place just to be able to keep folks informed and growing and and learning new tools of the trade.

Tammy Tilzey:

I like that. And sometimes funders may not think of that. We have our audience of funders. We're asking them doing listening sessions of what they're doing to to help their communities and nonprofits and their applicants and and that is an idea that comes up of working with consultants or trainers or, you know, not only will they apply for a grant that they they may get from that one funder, but how do you arm that organization then to fundraise and be successful so that they can be eventually sustainable and resilient?

Tammy Tilzey:

So how about as a nonprofit, are there recommendations on ideas of how they can request or plant that seed of an idea in a funder or different ways that funders can help? You know.

Amanda Pearce:

Foundations will solicit feedback in the form of a survey a lot of times right within their communities say, what are you looking for right now? I know that we have a community foundation out in Montana and one in Kansas or Kentucky. I think it's in Kansas who's doing sort of a community survey of all of the folks they serve to say, what do you need?

Amanda Pearce:

What can we help provide for you? And they give them some parameters of how they can answer that, and then they'll partner with folks like me or other organizations that do the kind of work I do to say, Hey, can you provide training on this very specific thing? This is what our folks want. We want it to be virtual or we want it to be in-person or we want it to be a hybrid event or whatever.

Amanda Pearce:

We really encourage the funder organizations to take the initiative to do that. Sometimes they're very limited resources and they may only have one staff person working in an office that's not always realistic. So when we work with a nonprofit client who says we don't have anything in our community for this type of education or for that type of support, we always say to them, Have you reached out to your local nonprofit development organization?

Amanda Pearce:

Whoever that is, it might be the community foundation. It might be a separate entity to say, Hey, can you help provide us a resource for this? Or even, Hey, we'd really love to partner with this organization. We know they do these types of trainings. Would you bring them in or would you offer it virtually or whatever? Because a lot of member organizations, we have one here in North Carolina, the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits.

Amanda Pearce:

And I know a lot of states have something similar to that or regions of states have something like that. They will offer that. So they have a conference every year. They have webinars, they have online resources and tools for people. Sometimes they do in-person trainings. So part of it is be proactive. If there's something that you need as a nonprofit or as a nonprofit community, if there's something you need, go to the people that can provide it for you.

Amanda Pearce:

Because if they don't know you need it, they don't know that they need to be providing it. Sometimes we reach out to people like, Hey, would you like to offer this in your community? We're like, Nobody's ever asked for that before. We're like, Well, it doesn't mean they don't need it. It might just mean they don't know they need to come to you to ask for it.

Amanda Pearce:

So it's a little bit on both sides. You know, we encourage folks have some communication there, talk about what you need and then it gets a little bit easier to sort of figure that out and help organizations grow.

Tammy Tilzey:

Yeah, well, you talking about how it has worked in other areas, maybe that'll trigger some folks to to see that as an example and request for it themselves. Yeah. So in thinking about training, let's take it a step deeper or maybe talk about consulting versus coaching if that's a next step that people usually ask for after training or is it, you know, how does it fit all those three things fit together?

Amanda Pearce:

Yeah. So when I work with consultants, I usually, I usually want them to figure out, do you want to be a coach or do you want to be a consultant? Or you want to be both, right? Because I'm both. I do both. And a lot of people don't know that there's a difference. They just use the terms interchangeably.

Amanda Pearce:

A coach typically helps people discover an answer. You might you're sort of guiding the horse to water, right? But a consultant will not only guide you there, they will also roll up their sleeves and help you do the work. They will help you craft the product, explore the answers, and figure out what is best, and do the nitty gritty work of all of that themselves.

Amanda Pearce:

So sometimes people say, Oh, I want to sign up for a coaching call. Okay, great, I can talk to you all day because that's what that is or I need a consultation. I need you to help me say what is the next step, right? And there's a difference when you engage a consultant in a contract, then that's where the work comes in.

Amanda Pearce:

But a consultation is I'm going to tell you what the answers could and should be and what I would say the answers are. But a coaching call is really saying, Well, what do you think you should do based on your current situation? How do you think that could be best answered? Right. So it's like it's more of the therapy session in.

Amanda Pearce:

And so I enjoy coaching people because I've been where they are. And for people that want to find the answers themselves and really want to get to that place of Oh yeah, that makes sense for me, then those are great tools. But for people that are like, I really just want to help me find the answer, move on because I've got stuff to do.

Amanda Pearce:

I don't have time for all that. Then that's a as a consulting piece. And so sometimes there's a price difference in that, right? If you want someone to guide you to water, that might be different than if you want them to bring the water to you.

Tammy Tilzey:

Exactly. Yeah. Depending on what you want for your own professional development of, you know, I need to learn how to do this myself or hey, you know, eventually will be big enough where I'll hire somebody like you. So I don't want to become that person. I just want that in the mix for right now. Right. Okay. I love that.

Tammy Tilzey:

Thank you for clarifying that. And in terms of consulting or either even coaching, too, how do you identify clients? Good clients.

Amanda Pearce:

So really that goes we're at Funding for Good. We're putting together a webinar for later this fall that we haven't talked about yet anywhere and haven't talked about online either. But we are going to put together a webinar to teach people how to grow their email lists, how to teach consultants to grow their email lists, and a big piece of finding the right clients for me anyway.

Amanda Pearce:

And I would say a lot of consultants may have a different answer to this, but for me it has been growing a following online building trust with them and for them to learn how our company is growing and evolving and the things we're offering and making sure we're making offers to the right groups of that list. So like not everybody on my list is a consultant, right?

Amanda Pearce:

Is probably the smallest part of that list because we were serving consultants ten years ago because I didn't know enough to train consultants. I have learned that over the past decade. And so that part of our list is growing. But in order to find those right clients, you have to offer the things they need, give them quality content, and then give them a way they can engage with you.

Amanda Pearce:

So for me, it's we offer a lot of free content. We have a YouTube channel now that's just for consultants. We have a whole playlist just for consultants. We have some blogs now. We have a separate mailing list just for consultants. We have webinars, just for consultants, and then for those people that engage with us in the webinars we have the option of a bootcamp and we take 5 to 7 people in our bootcamp three times a year and that's it.

Amanda Pearce:

So, you know, right now I have the bandwidth to work with at the most 21 consultants a year and really deep dove with them one on, one on, where are you and where do you want to be and help them get there? And it's very different. Every single consultant that I've worked with has been in a different place and has wanted to focus on a it might be the same category, but it's a very different specific need they have.

Amanda Pearce:

Like if, if a consultant says I need to work on contracts, well, for one consultant, maybe I've never written a contract. I don't know where to put in it. Help me with that. And for another consultant it might be I have seven contracts with current clients. I need to rewrite them all because I want to go from hourly to project based billing and I don't know how to do it.

Amanda Pearce:

And then role play with me how I have that conversation with my client to get them on board, right? So I literally just did that. I didn't just make that up. I just did that with a client and it was very, very specific to her. Right. And so I love that. And it's just I could probably have more clients, but I don't have the bandwidth to work with more clients.

Amanda Pearce:

And I'm not trying to grow my consulting company just to say I've got someone you can talk to or one you can work with. So for that right now, I kind of we have a small team and we like it that way because we get to know our clients very well.

Tammy Tilzey:

I love that. Yeah, and I see a lot of similarities with how Foundant as well in terms of finding our ideal clients and and when it, when you are able to access and reach the right audience, then it, it just becomes, like you said, providing content, get their attention and build trust and then, hey, this is what we offer and, and what do you need?

Tammy Tilzey:

And, and really matching what, what, what you have with those that need it. I it's true.

Amanda Pearce:

When I say very important for I think it's very important for everybody to understand this concept in any business world you're in, just because you offer something free and then you offer something at a low price and then you offer something that's high tech. It doesn't mean that a majority of your list is ever going to get to that hot ticket item.

Amanda Pearce:

And that's okay. Because if they're following you because they really appreciated the free content you gave them and it really helped them where they were right then. And the tools, the templates, the blogs, the webinars, the YouTube channel, the whatever, the podcast, the whatever it is that you've given them, have helped get them to that next level of what they needed.

Amanda Pearce:

That's great. That's why you created that content, right? You can't go into business as a nonprofit consultant or any kind of consultant and think that just because someone access something free, that now they owe you something paid, that's just not how it works. So you need to put content out in the universe with the best intentions in mind and hope that the people that watch it and listen to it can really do something with it and it helps them.

Amanda Pearce:

And then, you know, at some point some of them will pay for things, right?

Tammy Tilzey:

And then others will have had a great experience. And when they're neighbor asks them, Hey, do you know anybody that does this? Yeah, it's a web there and good karma, all that. Right? Yes. I love that that concept there. Thanks for throwing that in. And this this. Oh, we could go on forever. But what we are are there any other elements that you find common when you are looking at people who are on the fence deciding, should I, you know, should I go into consulting just because I'm trying to leave a bad situation?

Tammy Tilzey:

Or is this for me? And this is a direction that I've been that's been percolating. How how do you ask questions to help someone decide that?

Amanda Pearce:

So the biggest one is not really one question, but it is a group of questions that lead up to do you want to do the work and provide the services or do you also want to run the business? Because some people truly only want to provide the services and if they don't have the skill set, the desire or the capacity to also run the business, they will not be successful at consulting unless they're consulting for someone else.

Amanda Pearce:

And so I've run into a lot of people who are like, I really want to run my own business. And then we get into the the nuts and bolts of what that means, and they're like, Oh my gosh, that's a lot of work. Yes, it is. It's like people that want to start a nonprofit, but they really just want to run the program.

Amanda Pearce:

They don't want to run the organization. I'm like people in the business. It is not just a program. It's you've got to do all the financials, you've got to run the board, you've got to educate, you've got to train staff, you've got to do all the things and all. But I want to do that on the program. I'm like, Then you want to be an employee of someone else.

Tammy Tilzey:

To go with your idea to because there's such a need for that to.

Amanda Pearce:

Their terms.

Tammy Tilzey:

In a consulting type role or subcontracting role to or maybe an employee. Yeah. Yeah.

Amanda Pearce:

And so that's the biggest challenge. A lot of people want the freedom or what they see as the freedom of running their own business. And I got to tell you, behind the scenes, it's a whole lot of work, but people want what they think they're seeing, other people have. And they they don't take the time to evaluate what actually goes into running a business, starting a business, growing a business, and it's just a lot.

Amanda Pearce:

So we sit down and have very blunt conversations with people about what's your capacity, right? I mean, if you have three kids, a daughter, a spouse and blah, blah, blah, and you're also trying to start and run a business and you need to make X number of dollars a year more is a lot of factors in there. Do you really have the the resources to do it?

Amanda Pearce:

Do you have the time, the energy, the dollars, the the bandwidth? You know, I was I was in a very unique situation. And I tell people that all the time. But you're so successful. Yeah, I don't have kids. Let's just be real blunt about that. Mandy has dogs, and I don't I don't have kids and I don't want kids.

Amanda Pearce:

And that's just a personal choice. But a lot of people are not in that situation. You know, I started my business in my very early thirties. A lot of people are starting their families then. And so it's I had a lot of time to dedicate to it a lot. I could stay up on weekends and do that if I wanted.

Amanda Pearce:

I could not have to be available at 3:00 and 5:00 when the kids get home from school and when they need to eat dinner. You know, like I had time I could sleep in if I had to, I could get up early. If I had to, I could travel when I needed to. I didn't have all that stuff to manage.

Amanda Pearce:

And so it's a lot people need to be realistic when they're thinking about that and say, What can I do? What do I want to do? What do I need to do? And a lot of that comes down to how much do you need to make? So we have that conversation as well, like how much do you need to make and what's realistic and can you charge enough to do that?

Amanda Pearce:

And how many hours are you going to have to work to get there?

Tammy Tilzey:

I think that's so important to to take some time at the start to really focus in on that. Like, what are your what are your goals? Is it financial? Is it because you want to work with certain audiences? Is it because yeah, this is I.

Amanda Pearce:

Want to work with just one audience. A lot of people that have a skill set in the nonprofits are like, I've only ever been able to work for whatever the YMCA, right? And I want to work with animal welfare and health care and education. And I just want I want to have an impact in all those industries. Okay, great.

Amanda Pearce:

A lot of consultants say that. So it's possible and it's a great solution as long as all the other puzzle pieces fit, you know.

Tammy Tilzey:

Yes, yes. They all need to fit together. And part of the puzzle for success, you know, even as a Foundant Technologies employees and we talk about what really motivates us and it's different for every person and I just love working with the people and making them successful and see their time being spent on what they want to do instead of what the technology can do for them.

Tammy Tilzey:

Right. And and being able to do that for several types of missions, again, I can't decide on just one that I would like to support. Yeah. So that's figuring that out. And then matching it with what your situation is is definitely a step to to better success and happiness for sure. Because I think of if I want to be my own boss, set my own hours.

Tammy Tilzey:

I am sure I've evaluated my personality that I can blur the lines between work and life balance as a consultant just as much as I could as an employee.

Amanda Pearce:

Yes, I'm.

Tammy Tilzey:

Sure so that wouldn't all there. Well, this has been so helpful. Mandy, thanks again for helping our community with these thought provoking potential career paths or how to work with consultants and find clients, etc.. And I am going to put all of the resources and the trainings, the links to the conference, etc. in our show notes. And if you have anything else, any final thoughts or advice that you'd like to leave our listeners with, I'd love to allow you some time to do that.

Amanda Pearce:

Sure. I would just say that regardless of who it is, whether it's me or someone else, if you're trying to decide if you should take the step to start a business, whether it's part time or full time, or go full time from a part time gig or take your business to the next level, talk to someone who is there, who's been there, who's doing it, who's done it recently, and get some real world feedback from them.

Amanda Pearce:

You know, people who don't go through a bootcamp sometimes will just like pay for like a one hour consultation because we do that all the time with folks to be able to ask those open and honest questions, to be able to get someone else's perspective. Because a lot of times, even me, I have blinders on and I don't see the obvious questions I should be asking sometimes because I am seeing where I want to go and I don't see all the roadblocks on the way there.

Amanda Pearce:

So it's very helpful to talk to folks that are there that have done it or have done it recently, like don't talk to somebody about a consulting business 25 years ago because there was a lot of different roadblocks then. Right. Talk to somebody who's done it recently or is doing it right now and really get a feel for what you can and should do before you make a decision one way or another.

Amanda Pearce:

I think that that's probably one of the best things that I could share with you, regardless of who it is. Just make sure your asking questions to people who have experience.

Tammy Tilzey:

That's great advice. Thank you. Okay. That's a wrap. If you've learned something from today's Connected Philanthropy podcast, please share it with others who also might enjoy and then benefit from it as well. We look forward to connecting in future webinars, podcasts and community discussion platform, Compass. We wish you all the best success and again, thank you for all you do.

Tammy Tilzey:

Take care.

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