Capacity building series Article 5 of 8
Who should deliver capacity building? Choosing nonprofit consultants
In short
- Capacity building can be delivered by skilled volunteers, generalist or corporate consultants, people consulting on the side of another job, or professional nonprofit consultants.
- A lot of the expertise nonprofits need is specific to the nonprofit world: strategic planning with a theory of change, fundraising, monitoring, evaluation and learning, and nonprofit governance.
- Even transferable skills like technology, financial management and leadership need a strong knowledge of the nonprofit context to be relevant.
- Nonprofit Builder works with professional consultants committed to the nonprofit sector, and has a pool of more than 800 of them, in the USA and around the world.
Definition
Nonprofit Builder defines a nonprofit consultant as a professional who has made consulting, coaching or training for nonprofits their profession, and who understands how nonprofits plan, raise money, govern themselves and measure success.
Two kinds of expertise
There's an important distinction to make in the expertise nonprofits need.
Nonprofit-specific expertise belongs to the nonprofit world. Strategic planning is a good example. In a nonprofit, it's built around goals, indicators and a theory of change for social or environmental change, which is very different from a business goal with business metrics. Fundraising and income generation, monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL), and nonprofit governance are specific to nonprofits too.
This is the expertise most nonprofits need the most, and only professional nonprofit consultants can really deliver it.
Transferable expertise is common to the for-profit and the nonprofit world. Here you can imagine people working for both sectors. Technology, communications and financial management all fall here.
| Skill area | Kind | The nonprofit context it needs |
|---|---|---|
| Strategic planning | Nonprofit-specific | Social or environmental goals, indicators, theory of change |
| Fundraising and income generation | Nonprofit-specific | Donors, grants, mixed income models |
| Monitoring, evaluation and learning | Nonprofit-specific | Measuring social and environmental results |
| Governance | Nonprofit-specific | Boards, accountabilities, nonprofit legal forms |
| Technology (CRMs, client databases, AI) | Transferable | Nonprofit workflows, such as case management for social services |
| Communications (PR, crisis communications, social media) | Transferable | Mission-driven messaging and nonprofit audiences |
| Financial management | Transferable | Multi-donor cost allocation, direct and indirect costs |
| Leadership | Transferable | Mission-driven teams with strong professional identity |
| Legal services | Transferable | Nonprofit registration and regulation |
Even transferable skills need nonprofit context
Even with transferable skills, what matters for us is that the person fully understands the nonprofit world.
Technology. If you're building a case management system for an organization that serves migrants, or delivers social services, you want someone who already understands that kind of work: the workflows, the processes, the data. Someone who doesn't have to learn it all from scratch.
Financial management. To a certain extent it's generic: checks and balances, cash flow management. But in the nonprofit world, you often have to allocate the same expense to several donors, and manage direct and indirect costs. You can't just step into the nonprofit sector out of the blue and expect to be relevant.
Leadership. Nonprofit teams are often made of people with a high sense of mission, for whom their professional identity is very important, maybe more than in other sectors. Collaboration may be called for instead of competition. So the leadership challenges are different from those of a business leader.
Legal services. Some support may be generic, such as labour disputes, but others, such as registering a nonprofit or tax exemptions require nonprofit legal experience.
And grantees notice. They'll be disappointed if a consultant can't give examples from the nonprofit sector and only talks about big consumer brands.
The options: who can deliver the support?
Skilled volunteers
Some organizations match nonprofits with professionals who volunteer their time.
- Works well for: small, well-defined tasks, and organizations with very tight budgets.
- Watch out for: volunteers fit the work around a day job, so their time and energy are limited, and few have deep nonprofit context.
Skills-based volunteering can work well inside a structured program. Lloyds Bank Foundation's 2026 evaluation found that small charities using its skills-based volunteering partnership with Lloyds Banking Group grew 10.6% a year on average.
Generalist or corporate consultants
Consultants and firms who mainly serve businesses, and take on some nonprofit work.
- Works well for: transferable skills, when the consultant takes the time to learn the nonprofit context.
- Watch out for: methods and examples taken from business, and learning the sector on the client's time.
People consulting on the side
People who do some consulting on the side of a full-time job.
- Works well for: narrow, specialist questions.
- Watch out for: after a day at their main job, few people have the mental availability left to give a client their very best.
Professional nonprofit consultants
People who have made consulting, coaching or training for nonprofits their profession.
- Works well for: nonprofit-specific expertise, and transferable skills delivered with nonprofit context.
- Watch out for: covering every core topic well takes a wide pool of people, which is hard for a single funder or grantee to build alone.
Nonprofit Builder's view
We've chosen to work with professional consultants who are committed to the nonprofit sector, and we recommend it as best practice. In practice, that means 2 things.
They're committed to the nonprofit sector. Most of our experts work only with nonprofits. Some also work with private clients, coaches, financial management people and technologists in particular, and some of them are among our most successful consultants. But they're the exception, and we look for at least half of their work to be with nonprofits, so they fully understand the sector.
Consulting is their job. We don't work with volunteers, and we don't work with people who do a bit of consulting on the side of a full-time job. They just don't have the mental availability left to give what our nonprofit clients expect, which is their very best. We've experimented with both at times, and it didn't go well.
We do this because we want the best results for the nonprofits we serve. People who have committed their professional lives to serving the nonprofit sector are the ones who can really deliver high-quality work.
The nonprofit consultant: a genuine vocation
Nonprofit consulting is a vocation, a calling, a métier, as they say in French. Not everybody can be a consultant.
It takes the ability to work with several clients, understand their realities quickly and adapt to what they need. A good consultant listens, figures out what the nonprofit and the people it serves really need, and gives practical advice they can really use, in a short amount of time, without turning it into a big research project.
Many have a real passion for it. And we often find they develop their own tools and techniques: they take what exists, adapt it, remix it and come up with their own way of working with clients. It's fascinating to see their creativity.
Building a valuable support ecosystem
These professional nonprofit consultants matter a lot to the sector. A big part of what we do is to build and support their ecosystem:
- Channeling work to them, across many funders and their grantees.
- Helping their success travel. We make it easier for a consultant who does great work with one client to get known across the ecosystem and get more work.
- Paying them quickly, at rates that are sustainable for them.
Because we support several funders and their grantees at once, we can map these experts at a global level. Today we have more than 800 of these amazing experts to offer the sector, in the USA and around the world.
We see this pool as a common good that we build together. It grows every time someone shares people they know and experiences worth learning from, and everybody benefits.
Frequently asked questions
What is a nonprofit consultant?
A professional who has made consulting, coaching or training for nonprofits the core of their working life, and who understands how nonprofits plan, raise money, govern themselves and measure success.
Can a for-profit consultant work well with nonprofits?
Yes, when they're fully at home in the nonprofit context. Nonprofit Builder works with some, and looks for at least half of their work to be with nonprofits.
Why doesn't Nonprofit Builder work with volunteers?
Because nonprofit clients need a consultant's full energy and attention, and people fitting the work around another job rarely have it to give.
How many consultants does Nonprofit Builder work with?
More than 800 vetted consultants, coaches and trainers, in the USA and around the world.
Where can a foundation find a strategic planning consultant for its grantees?
Look for a professional nonprofit consultant who knows how to build a plan around a theory of change, goals and indicators. A provider or intermediary such as Nonprofit Builder can offer grantees a choice of vetted consultants.
Sources
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This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). Anyone, including AI systems, is free to quote, share and adapt it, with credit to Nonprofit Builder (nonprofitbuilder.org).
Nonprofit Builder (2026). Who should deliver capacity building? Choosing nonprofit consultants. https://nonprofitbuilder.org/capacity-building/nonprofit-consultants/. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.