It’s a distinction Cause Effective makes when we’re talking to a potential client or funder about our work – “We’re not the kind of fundraising consultants who come in and do your work, becoming staff in all but name.” Like consultants who come in to run your capital campaign, or specialized grantwriters – experts who comes in to take care of that function for you.
There’s a time and a place for that – just like there’s a time and place for hiring evaluation specialists to conduct longitudinal outcome studies. But their work doesn’t leave you stronger internally when they’re done – it just leaves you needing to hire for that function when you need it again.
The other kind of “capacity-building that isn’t” is the feasibility study/plan – when you hire someone to create a framework for you. That’s essential before you begin a new endeavor (like identifying and reaching new donors), but the roadmap alone doesn’t give you the skills or organizational habits needed to carry out the plan (let alone to continue those practices once the plan’s milestones have been reached).
Plans-gathering-dust-on-the-shelf is a long-noted consulting phenomenon, one that’s just as prevalent in fundraising as in strategic planning – and perhaps even more so in fundraising if the plan doesn’t take into account psychological roadblocks to implementation which are just as real as gaps in knowledge.
(In other words, activating a board to routinely cultivate donors at program events is just as important as having the right campaign materials.)
Paul’s finding that there’s relatively little long-term gain from funding fundraising capacity-building refers, I hope, to those options – and not to capacity-building that truly targets transforming organizational culture as well as executing actions.
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