Consultants Manual

Please take a moment to read this Consultants' Manual carefully. If you have any questions about it, please contact us at support@nonprofitbuilder.org.

It's also important to familiarize yourself with the Terms and Conditions for Consulting Engagement, Code of Conduct, and Safeguarding Policy, which are an integral part of your contracts with the Nonprofit Builder.

Contracts - who is contracting you?

As a consultant, you can either be hired directly by one of the participating foundations, or by the Nonprofit Builder.

You are hired by the Nonprofit Builder: In the majority of cases, you will be hired by the Nonprofit Builder to work for one of the grantees of our member foundations. This will be initiated by the grantee, because they will have found your profile in the directory and found it relevant, or because we have recommended you to them. In this case, you will reach out to the grantee for a call, write up a statement of work for a consulting project if there is a mutual interest, submit it online for further chain of approvals (the NPB team >> nonprofit organization >> Foundation), and when it is approved, you start work. In this case, the contract is between you and the Nonprofit Builder, and we will pay you for your work.

In this case, your contract comprises the project proposal, which is statement of work which describes your engagement for a specific grantee, as well as the Terms of Service, and the Code of Conduct which are an integral part of your contracts with Nonprofit Builder.

You are hired by the foundation: By default, all of the participating foundations will be able to see your profile. Foundations may sometimes hire consultants directly for a project, or offer them a retainer. In this case, you have a direct relationship with the foundation, and they will pay you and you have no contractual relationship with us. We do not charge any overhead on this type of contractual relationship, and most often we may not even know about it.

Free membership for consultants: In either case, there is no fee for any consultant to join and be part of the Nonprofit Builder. We cover all our costs from overhead that we charge to the foundations, either as a percentage on top of the consulting budget they give us, or as a fixed annual fee to use the directory.

Joining the Nonprofit Builder

To maintain our high quality of service, the Nonprofit Builder is a closed platform. We primarily select consultants who have been nominated by a foundation or a grantee after a positive first-hand experience. We also accept recommendations from trusted colleagues and may proactively source consultants through advertising or nomination campaigns to fill specific needs.

To become a consultant on our platform, candidates go through the following process:

Interview and Assessment: We conduct an interview to assess your suitability for the platform and identify your particular skills and areas of expertise. We also discuss fees to ensure they align with what foundations are willing to pay. This step helps us match you with the right projects where you can truly succeed.
Onboarding: If selected, you'll receive an electronic invitation to set up your account. We'll also send you a follow-up email with tips for creating an effective profile. Please read this carefully to make sure your profile is appealing and complete. You can also invite colleagues from your firm to join the platform.
Profile Review and Tagging: After you complete your profile, our team will review and tag it. This ensures your profile appears accurately in our search filters. We will also add you to specific grantee portals based on your location and expertise. If your profile is empty or lacks sufficient detail, we will contact you up to three times to request more information. If we don’t receive a response after our third attempt, your profile will be temporarily unpublished until you provide the necessary details.
Visibility and Matching: Once your profile is live, you become visible to foundations and grantees. A grantee might reach out to you directly for a matching call after finding you in our directory, or we may recommend you as a good fit for a particular project.
What kind of consultants are we looking for?

Relevant expertise in an area relevant to nonprofit organizational development: strategy, communications, fundraising, financial management, etc.
Established career as a full-time professional consultant with some years of proven experience
Experience with the nonprofit world, civil society, NGOs
High degree of professionalism, dedicated, responsive, committed to quality
Practical, able to deliver targeted support with quick results
Ideally, evidence of innovative approaches, such as having developed their own methods and tools, and constantly learning and improving.

Your profile - who can see you?

By default, the foundations can see all the consultants on the platform. This is not the case for the grantees, who only see a selection of the consultants.

The foundations see all consultants, and in the directory they use, they have a "Like" button they can use to decide which consultants their grantees can see. You can see which foundations have "liked" you from the tags in your profile. Some foundations don't use this "Like" feature and ask Nonprofit Builder to decide which consultants are relevant to their grantees, so you may be visible to more than the foundations who have tagged you.

Also, the Nonprofit Builder decides which consultants can be seen by grantees. Consultants will not be shown to grantees if their fees go beyond what foundations will pay, or if they do not have the aptitude for working with grantees. Nonprofit Builder will include the consultants in one or more of the directories below based on their relevance to the grantees who access those directories:

Probono (Laudes and Oak): consultants able to work internationally (outside of their country or region)
Action Learning Program (all foundations supporting energy transition): consultants able to work internationally (outside their country or region)
Segal Support (Segal grantees in Africa): mostly consultants living in Africa
Choose Love: mostly European and Eastern European consultants able to work with grantees serving refugees from the war in Ukraine
ASIA Hub: consultants based in Asia
Funder Safeguarding Collaborative program: experts in safeguarding that work globally.

Consultants are added to the browser if they have relevant skills, or if their pricing fits what the foundations will pay. Geography is also a factor: Nonprofit Builder maintains regional lists for Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe, so grantees from those regions will primarily see consultants from their region, and may only see consultants from other regions if they have proven experience in that region, or fill gaps in expertise.

In addition to your profile, as you take on Nonprofit Builder assignments, you start to accumulate more data related to those assignments: your proposals, your project reports, feedback reports from grantees about your projects, your feedback reports about grantees. These are only shared with those concerned: the Nonprofit Builder, the grantee you worked for, and the foundation.

Controlling the visibility of your profile

If you are not available for a given period, please let us know and we will unpublish your profile for that period. We will soon add a button so you can manage your visibility yourself.

And what can you see? As a consultant, you can see the full consultant directory, so you can find partners or peers to network with. But you cannot see the foundations or foundation staff (to prevent solicitations), and you can only see the grantees who have asked you for a meeting or a project, or whom you have collaborated with.

The importance of a good profile

Your profile is important: external evaluations have shown that grantees care and read the profiles carefully, and also then explore your Linked In page and website. So please follow the following advice.

Describe your services from the perspective of a potential grantee who needs to understand what you do.

What is your core expertise?
What services do you offer?
What results can your clients expect from working with you?
What is unique about your and your approach?
What is your story, how did you get to do what you do?
What kind of clients have you worked with, what do they do, where do they come from, are they big or small?
Can you name some previous clients?

In most cases, no need to reinvent the wheel, you can just copy the text you already have on your website. Please avoid any jargon or wording that is too technical.

You can also browse other profiles to take inspiration on how to use your own. You will immediately see why some are better than others.

Your profile should reflect yourself precisely and truthfully, in particular in terms of certifications and experience.

You are welcome to include photos of yourself and your team members, if applicable. Additionally, we may feature a short introductory video to help grantees get to know you better and gain a sense of your team's dynamic.

Expertise tags

The Nonprofit Builder team, after consulting with you during the interview, will assign the appropriate core expertise tags to your profile. If you believe any tags need to be modified or if you'd like to add or change a tag, please reach out to us at support@nonprofitbuilder.org.

When selecting tags for your expertise, it’s essential to focus on your core areas of strength. We avoid adding too many tags, as this can dilute the profile and make it unclear to prospective clients where your true expertise lies. For instance, if you’re a communications consultant specializing in communications strategy, it’s important to select "communications" as a tag rather than "strategy consultant," which covers a different area.

Consulting firms that offer services across multiple expertise areas are welcome to choose more tags.

Additionally, consultants must provide a brief description of each area of expertise they select. At least one paragraph should be included in your profile for each expertise, explaining your experience and approach in that area.

How much work can you expect?

It varies! Some consultants may receive multiple engagements throughout the year, while others might only get a few per year. Some may not receive any engagements at all.

This is influenced by the following factors:

Geography: foundations may be more active in some regions than others, so there will be more work in some regions than others: currently the most active regions are Africa and Europe, and we anticipate a lot more work in Asia.
Expertise: some expertise such as fundraising, communications, and strategy is more sought after than others. However there are usually less consultants covering the less sought-after expertises, so it pays to have a very niche expertise.
Amount of consultants for a given expertise or geography: we have shortages in some expertise and geographies, and over-supply in others, so this will also influence the amount of work you get.
Your track record with us: grantees will probably prefer consultants with more experience than those with less. If your track record with the Nonprofit Builder is short then be sure to describe the rest of your experience in your profile.
Your profile: again, the quality of your profile counts, as well as your history with the Nonprofit Builder. Grantees look carefully at every detail so the best profiles get the most work.
Your ability to convert a matching call into a full project.

So the Nonprofit Builder cannot guarantee any engagements to the consultants who join the platform. We need to underline this: do not count on us for a regular income.

We take measures to ensure that everybody gets opportunities, for example promoting new consultants or pro-active matching of consultants with grantees, or encouraging grantees to use consultants from other regions. But at the end of the day, the grantees are in the driving seat, and are free to choose the consultants they prefer.

How big or long are Nonprofit Builder engagements?

Engagements typically range from 20 hours or less, for shorter tactical pieces of work, spread over a month or two, to several days for more strategic pieces of work, spread over three or four months. In the case of coaching, the usual is an engagement of 10 sessions, which can be renewed.

It's the consultants who set the duration of their engagements, as it's based on the work to be done. Consultants should be reasonable and ethical in budgeting their time, and not pad projects with unnecessary "preparation days" or "research days''. Each project proposal is carefully reviewed for consistency between goals, activities, and the amount of hours or days requested.

The duration and cost of the engagements are also sometimes set by the foundations, who may limit a consulting project by number of hours, or by the overall cost.

Consulting projects, how does the process work?

1. Grantee contacts the consultant

The process starts with the consultant being contacted by a grantee. The grantee may discover the consultant in the database, or the consultant may be recommended by another grantee, their program officer at the foundation, or as is most often the case, the Nonprofit Builder.

Be responsive in communications with the grantee. Ideally, reply the same day.
You should log into the CRM to let the grantee know that you accept the call or if you need to decline.

In some cases, the Nonprofit Builder team may introduce a consultant to a grantee via email. If they agree to continue the activity should be initiated in the CRM by either of them: a grantee or a consultant.

2. Scoping call / Initial consultation

Book a scoping call to discuss their need, the relevance of your skills, and to agree to a support project if there is a mutual interest.

Do not take an engagement you cannot deliver on in terms of time or competence. Contact us if this happens so we can find other consultants who are better positioned.
We do not pay for initial consultations which we now call scoping calls. Most of these calls lead to consulting projects or coaching engagements, so we consider them as matching calls that do not need compensation.

3. Project proposal (statement of work)

If there is a common interest, then you write up a project proposal (statement of work) and submit it for review and approval.

Adapt your consulting project to each grantee. Do not simply recycle standard offerings.
Do your very best to provide the grantee with a tangible, high-quality outcome that works for them, and builds their capacity.
Keep the project costs as tight as possible to still deliver a quality outcome to the grantee. Don't add preparation and research days which are not necessary.
Keep consistent pricing across projects, don't increase your fees from this foundation to that foundation because you feel they may pay more.
Don't create dependencies. Work should lead to empowered grantees with the tools, skills, framework to continue by themselves.
Clarify roles and responsibilities for tasks, decision-making expectations. This alignment prevents frustrations during the project.
Include 1-2 hours to have post-project calls with the grantees you worked with to check in on how things are going and whether they require any further support.

4. Project implementation

Once the project is approved, all parties will be notified and you can start work.

The grantee has the right to stop a project at any moment, for any reason: they may have no time, they may feel the project is not relevant or not what they expected, they may not want to work with you.
Likewise, as their consultant, it's your ethical duty to stop the project and report back to us if you feel the project is no longer justified or loses its meaning. In particular, if the grantee is no longer responsive, then after a couple of reminders please report to us so we can intervene.
We recommend asking the grantee to what extent they wish you to be hands-on with the project management. Many grantees appreciate if the consultants manage the process for them, send them a timeline, set deadlines, and hold them accountable. This clarity will also give you a mandate to push them so they complete their end of the project.

5. Reporting and payment

Once the project is completed, you may submit your report and request payment.

You need to submit your report before requesting your final payment. In your report, provide candid and constructive feedback to the Nonprofit Builder.
The grantee is also asked for frank feedback about their satisfaction with your work (see below) but it will not hold back your payment if they are late.

Information on payments

Both consultant and grantee may stop a project at any time for any reason. In such a case, the consultant will be paid for milestones delivered or a pro-rata of time invested.

Should the consultant exceed the approved budget without prior agreement, be aware that such expenses may not be reimbursed by the funder, and the consultant does so at his own discretion.

In principle, the consultant may invoice at the end of the project. For larger and longer engagements, exceeding 6000$ and 6 months, the consultant may submit an intermediate invoice, so as to keep the balance due below 6000$. Similarly, in the case of a retainer contract, or if the consultant cumulates several contracts, the consultant may invoice on a monthly basis.

Nonprofit Builder does not pay advances. There are no exceptions to this rule. Why not? It may happen that the project does not start, or terminates early before the advance has been consumed, and in this case, the consultant will need to pay back the amount.

Taxes: VAT/GST should not be applied or included in the project budget unless the Consultant is based in Switzerland. In that case, the total amount should be VAT-inclusive.

Each funder has its own currency, and the consultant must invoice in that currency as indicated in the CRM for that project. The consultant is responsible for providing a bank account that can receive payments in that currency.

Bank transfer fees are paid by Nonprofit Builder, but fees charged by the consultant's intermediary bank, or by the consultant's destination bank, will be paid by the consultant.

If the project includes any travel, all travel expenses shall be included in the Proposal and subject to approval by the funder and the Nonprofit Builder. The consultant is responsible for taking travel, accident, sickness, or injury insurance, and insurance against theft or other loss.

Quality assurance processes

One of the key attractions which brings foundations and their grantees to the platform is to access high-quality consultants which is of paramount importance to them. Quality is also important to all consultants who are doing their very best to deliver outstanding work, and want to be surrounded by peers at the same level of quality or commitment.

To ensure this quality of service, the Nonprofit Builder is a closed platform, to which all consultants have traditionally been invited, on the basis of a first-hand positive experience by the nominating foundation or grantee. More recently, Nonprofit Builder may pro-actively source consultants through advertising or nomination campaigns, to fill a particular gap.

The Nonprofit Builder's quality assurance consists of the following elements.

The onboarding interview serves to understand the experience, strengths and skills.
The code of conduct for consultants serves as a guide to ensure quality work and is an integral part of every contract.
The consultant's professional attitude is very closely monitored during the first engagements, in particular the quality of the communications, the care put into the project proposals, and the fairness of fees they request.
Each project proposal is reviewed for quality, clarity, and of the amount of consistency of work with the fees requested.
At the end of each engagement, the grantee is asked to rate and report on their satisfaction with their consultant's service (the consultant is also asked for a report on their results and relationship with the grantee).
For longer or more substantial engagements, Nonprofit Builder will check in regularly with consultants or grantees to make sure all is going well.
Quality assurance investigation: the Nonprofit Builder staff may launch a quality assurance investigation and interview both grantee and consultant in case of the early or late termination of a project, or if the grantee is no longer responsive, or if the one makes a negative review about the other.

Feedback and Reviews

We collect feedback from the grantee about your work at the end of every project, as part of our quality assurance. What we ask:

Would you recommend this consultant to a colleague or friend? on a rate 1-10, one being no, 10 being yes
How can the consultant improve his/her service
What did you learn or achieve through this consultancy? How is it helping you get more impact

We offer the grantee the opportunity to keep their feedback confidential so as to encourage a candid response. If they agree to share it with you, as it is most often the case, you will see it on the project page of your CRM and receive a notification.

If they don't wish to share it, as in the case of a very negative review, the report will only be shared with the Nonprofit Builder and the foundation, who has paid for your work. This will usually trigger a quality assurance investigation during which we will contact you to hear your version, so you will hear the essence of the review from the Nonprofit Builder staff.

Very important: Generally we understand that it's not easy to work with grantees, and a negative review does not mean you did a bad job. For example, your work may point the grantee to some uncomfortable truths they do not appreciate hearing about. Or there may be a mismatch and they may not appreciate your style of work. This happens and nobody will hold it against you. Our foundations also understand that organisationally development is inherently messy. However you will also understand if we receive feedback which is consistently negative, we may delete your profile from the directory. This is in everybody's best interest: the grantees, the funders, and also the other consultants.

Unpublishing or deletion from the databasee

A consultant may request temporary unpublishing or permanent deletion at any time for any reason. A consultant will usually request to be unpublished if they no longer have the time for any Nonprofit Builder engagements, or have returned to full-time employment.

The Nonprofit Builder may temporarily unpublish or permanently delete for the following reasons:

The consultant gets no engagement for a long period of time (more than two or three years)
The consultant is rarely able to convert initial consultations into full engagements
The expertise or geographical scope of the consultant no longer matches the needs of the foundations or grantees
The consultant shows a poor professional attitude, is discourteous with staff or grantees, or violates the code of conduct.
The consultant has consistently negative satisfaction ratings (see section above)
The consultant does not respond to emails despite several attempts to communicate.

The Nonprofit Builder takes decisions to un-publish or permanently delete a consultant's profile at its own discretion, and there is no appeal. In the future, the Nonprofit Builder may set up an ombudsman to act as a neutral intermediary between the consultant and Nonprofit Builder, working to ensure fair treatment and resolution of disputes

Intellectual property

The consultants retain their intellectual property over all tools they use as part of their work: templates, guides, etc.

The grantee owns the iterations of these templates that are developed for them as part of the consulting project (policies, strategy documents, business plans, etc) and is free to modify and share these policies in any way they please.

Confidentiality

Confidentiality is of utmost importance to the Nonprofit Builder. Users of our consultant platform, both consultants, and clients, acknowledge and agree to uphold the principles of confidentiality throughout their interactions on the platform.

Consultants and clients shall not disclose, share, or misuse any confidential information obtained through the platform, including but not limited to proprietary business information, trade secrets, client details, or any sensitive data shared during the engagement.

Nonprofit Builder undertakes to maintain the confidentiality of user data and information to the best of its ability. However, users recognise that Nonprofit Builder cannot be held responsible for any breaches of confidentiality resulting from external factors or unforeseen events.

By using our platform, users commit to respecting the confidentiality of the information exchanged and understand the importance of maintaining trust within the professional relationships facilitated by Nonprofit Builder.

Liability Limitation

In engaging consultants through our platform, Nonprofit Builder shall not be held liable for any damages, losses, or liabilities arising from the services provided by consultants to grantees. Nonprofit Builder disclaims responsibility for the quality, accuracy, or outcome of consultant services. Any disputes are solely between the client and the consultant although the Nonprofit Builder will do its best to mediate.

Security Measures

Nonprofit Builder is committed to maintaining the utmost security of user data and information. We implement robust security measures to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data on our platform. These measures include encryption protocols, secure data storage practices, and regular security assessments.

However, users are reminded that no online platform can guarantee absolute security, and Nonprofit Builder cannot be held liable for any unauthorized access, data breaches, or security incidents. Users are encouraged to take personal responsibility for safeguarding their login credentials and notifying Nonprofit Builder immediately of any suspicious activities.

By using our platform, users acknowledge and accept the inherent risks associated with online services and agree that Nonprofit Builder shall not be held responsible for any security breaches or their consequences.

Last modified: 2 June 2025