I recently spoke at APRA’s Prospect Development 2015 conference in New Orleans in response to a request from APRA to present a session on what it’s like to be a consultant and how to plan and make a move from front-line work into consulting. There was a fairly strong desire on the part of attendees to learn more about this, which did not surprise me. I remember the things I wondered about when I first entertained the notion of becoming a consultant; in particular, the lack of a clear understanding of how to get from where I was to where I wanted to be.

Whenever I speak at conferences I try very hard to provide attendees with useful takeaways they can implement right way at their organizations. Given the requested subject matter, this was a bit harder than usual – presumably, some participants would be more interested in finding their way to a new career, rather than bringing something back to their current one!

But as I thought about the things I have learned about the actual work of consulting – things I didn’t know before I became a consultant, I realized that many of the strategies and tactics I employ every day would have really helped me when I was a front-line fundraiser, advancement services practitioner, and manager. This became the focus of the first third of my session. My PowerPoint presentation has been included here in PDF format (APRA 2015 – BF). I hope you’ll find it useful, and if you’d like to explore any of the ideas further, I’m happy to talk.

Sincerely,

Brandon Ferris, Senior Director of Strategic Services and Fundraising Counsel
Zuri Groupbrandon@zurigroup.com
@datadrivenbf
datadrivenfundraising.com