Resources
Find the tools you need to succeed in hosting your next pro bono consulting project with skilled volunteers
Pro Bono/Skills-Based Volunteering Resources
What is skills-based volunteering?
Skills-based volunteering, also known as professional volunteering or pro bono consulting can help your organization fill some needed gaps and get things done with technical assistance and training from high-skilled volunteers with experience in these areas (e.g. marketing and communications, fundraising, strategic planning, etc.).
For a good description of professional volunteering see Global Pro Bono Network’s What is Pro Bono?The site also has additional Resources such as case studies, publications, and guides.
Assessing your Readiness
Capacity Commons is a nonprofit organization that has developed a suite of helpful resources for skills-based volunteerism. Check your readiness to engage skills-based volunteers with their free Organizational Readiness Assessment.
And of course the Taproot Foundation is the leading authority on what makes a skills-based volunteer project successful. They offer a wide range of resources for both the nonprofit host organization as well as the pro bono consultant. Here are some guides from Taproot and other intermediary organizations based in the US that I find particularly helpful:
Powered by Pro Bono: The Nonprofits Step-by-Step Guide to Scoping, Securing, Managing, and Scaling Pro Bono Resources (the Taproot Foundation's book about how to leverage capacity building resources for nonprofit organizations)
Nonprofit Consulting Essentials: What Nonprofits and Consultants Need to Know, by Penelope Cagney, Alliance for Nonprofit Management (available on Amazon Kindle)
Engaging Pro Bono and Skills-Based Volunteers (courtesy of VolunteerMatch.org). This presentation includes a helpful Worksheet that you can fill in with your desired goals, deliverables and skills sought for your consulting project.
Fund Development Planning
As the Cheshire Cat said to Alice in Wonderland, “if you don’t know where you’re going any road will get you there.” As a nonprofit you need to chart a course for your fundraising activities by carefully planning out how much you need to raise for your programs and operating budget, what percentage you would like to generate from different sources (individuals, government, and private institutions like foundations and corporations), and what is your strategy for getting there.
Nonprofit consultants can help you to create an integrated fund development plan using various templates (check out Network for Good’s Fundraising Plan Template and Funding Sources spreadsheet). Skills-based volunteering organization Catchafire in Claymont, Delaware offers a six-step Guide to Creating a Fundraising Plan for your nonprofit.
Grant Proposal Writing
There are so many training materials out there on writing winning grant proposals, but one that I have personally used in my own fundraising and recommend to all my clients is called Winning Grants Step by Step: The Complete Workbook for Planning, Developing, and Writing Successful Proposals, by Tori O'Neal-McElrath (available on Amazon and other book sellers)