Raise Your Voice Blog | Nicole Clark Consulting

13 Oct, 2021

Ask Nicole: Prepping for Your Consultant/Partner Discovery Call

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-11-03T09:19:47-04:00October 13th, 2021|Categories: Consulting|Tags: Ask Nicole, clients, consulting, Partnership, Project Planning|0 Comments

Have a question you’d like to be featured? Let me know.

After searching the internet, asking your networks for referrals, and scouring social media, you’ve finally found someone or a team that you can see your organization working with.

Checking out their website, social media presence, and testimonials is the first step.

The next step is scheduling a “discovery call”.

A discovery call is an initial conversation you have to determine whether you will be a good fit. It’s an opportunity to do a deep dive into your project/event, and get a sense of what it would be like to work together.

I normally don’t go in completely unaware. For my process, prospective partners and clients fill out my questionnaire form. After I scan to make sure their project falls into my focus areas and what they’re looking for is something I can help with, and they pass my “do I actually want to work with them?” scan, I set up a discovery call, specifying this as a preliminary call to determine if we will be a good fit.

Of course, you won’t know what it’ll be like until you actually start working together, but you can look for red flags as well as see if they understand your vision. Here are some tips for prepping for your discovery call:

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1 Sep, 2021

Ask Nicole: How Do I Avoid Mission Creep?

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-09-01T10:05:29-04:00September 1st, 2021|Categories: Consulting|Tags: Ask Nicole, consulting, Mission Creep|0 Comments

I recently took a week off from client and partner consulting work to catch up on some administrative tasks that have been piling up.

One of my tasks was revamping my website, focusing on easier navigation (in some cases, redesigning web pages) and clarifying my overall messaging.

I had a aha moment while redesigning the Blog Archives page. I noticed where I’ve been spending most of my time blogging about, and I’ve decided moving forward to limit the amount of content I create around starting and running a consulting business.

I’m at a place now where I prefer sharing successes and lessons learned in my adventures with clients and partners both in real time and in reflection of past projects. Plus, it makes sense to showcase what I’ve done, from a marketing perspective. Unless something major happens that impacts how I run my business, I prefer to take this approach for now.

So consider this Ask Nicole post to be the last business related content I write publicly for a while. However, I will continue sharing more about my journey in my newsletter.

Another reason for limiting this type of content is the amount of inquiries I’ve gotten regarding helping people with set up their consulting businesses.

Many of these inquiries are from social workers and public health professionals. This is great, and I appreciate the well wishes I’ve gotten for being transparent about my professional journey. And raising your voice for women and girls of color* may look like leaving your day job and doing your own thing so that you can do that.

But coaching people through this process takes me out of my mission. Which brings me to the point of this post.

When a new idea emerges, evaluate whether it keeps you in alignment with your mission or takes you out of it.

The services I currently provide are in alignment with each other. Essentially, they work together to help organizations focus on sustainability, being data driven in their decision making, and ensuring that decision making is culturally and equitable responsive to important stakeholders.

This is how I raise my voice for women and girls of color*, and this is my preference. Fortunately, I have colleagues I’ve admired and followed for a while that I can refer these inquiries to such as Eva Forde, Kyshira Moffett, and Rosetta Thurman, as they focus specifically on building a business and brand and I’ve learned a lot from them.

Ask yourself:

Does this new idea make sense for my mission?

Even if it sounds like profitable, even if many are asking for it, even if it sounds like something you may enjoy doing, still ask yourself this question. Avoid mission creep.

The last thing I would want is having an abundance of opportunities for business coaching that overshadow the work I feel more aligned to do. Without this reflection, creating a new service because people ask you for it can make you feel resentful. Especially if that idea takes off.

Always evaluate a new idea against your mission. If it makes sense, go for it. If it doesn’t, refer out. Reject the notion of taking on people’s ideas of what you should be doing.

And isn’t that the point of moving on and doing your own thing?

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** PS: * “Women and girls of color” refers to gender-expansive adults and youth, including cisgender, transgender, non-binary, gender non-conforming, gender queer and any girl-identified person)

Raise Your Voice: How do you avoid mission creep? Share below in the comments section.

4 Aug, 2021

Ask Nicole: Hire a Consultant vs. Do it Yourself

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T21:12:50-04:00August 4th, 2021|Categories: Consulting|Tags: Ask Nicole, Capacity Building, consulting|0 Comments

I had a discovery call with a prospective client recently, who wants to build an evaluation framework for their staff to implement. The executive director wanted an evaluation framework that was general enough to cover each program but could be tailored to each program’s specifics.

This organization has the budget to hire a consultant, but once the consultant’s job is over, the organization will have to pick up where the consultant left off. That often includes understanding their capacity to implement evaluation activities.

It’s no surprise that many organizations doing amazing work tend to have a small staff. And just like the larger organizations, they focus on the bigger picture and how to measure their impact. (I’ll touch on how grassroots organizations can be more data driven in next week’s blog post.)

They’re getting funding (via their supporters or from foundations) to help build out their infrastructure and capacity to do this data driven work while also being deep within the communities they serve.

“Who will implement this framework and all of its activities?“, I asked the executive director. In order to build an appropriate evaluation framework, I have to understand staff capacity.

It’s not a waste of time or money to hire someone to help. It is a waste of time if the end product isn’t conducive to where your staff’s capacity currently is, which could lead into finding the money to bring in another consultant to help with implementation.

Should you hire a consultant or should you do it yourself?

As a consultant, while my business thrives on being hired to do stuff, the answer isn’t that simple.

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21 Jul, 2021

Try This: The RFP “YES” Checklist

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T21:11:52-04:00July 21st, 2021|Categories: Consulting|Tags: consulting, Equity, Try This|0 Comments

*Try this out and let me know how it goes.*

Last week, I posed 7 questions to consider before sending out a Request for Proposals (RFP) to evaluate whether your organization’s process for securing consultants is equitable.

Also occurring last week, I responded to a RFP. There were several reasons why I responded (knowing the person who sent it, interest in working with the organization, having the skillset needed, the project focus, etc.). However, I responded because this RFP:

Was clear, concise, and outlined everything I needed to know
Included the statement: “In line with our focus on equity and evaluation, we aim to reduce the burden on interested applicants.”
Limited the proposal to 5-7 pages
Was explicit in requesting proposals from independent consultants as well as partners
Included in the proposal requirements: “A brief work plan of the steps you propose, which we recognize are subject to change”
Lists the qualifications they’re looking for, but also stated they understood that no applicant or proposal will meet all qualifications
Specified that the proposal submission is the first step in a longer conversation with their time, with a small number of applicants being asked to have a brief phone call with the team
Didn’t request additional documents (most likely because they knew they would’t read through them)
The project sounds really interesting

What’s most impressive is that this RFP came from a philanthropic organization. When I emailed my proposal, I complimented the staff on how equitable their RFP was. The only thing the RFP didn’t disclose was the budget (and last week’s post shares why disclosing it is important.)

Regardless of the selection outcome, I hope this is the start of organizations developing more RFP equitable practices.

What makes you say “YES!” to responding to a Request for Proposals (RFP)?

Do you have a standard list of requirements? Are they consistent across RFPs, or do you make considerations based on situational factors?

Let’s create your RFP “YES!” checklist.

This activity is ideal for:

Anyone wanting a proactive approach to considering whether to submit a response to a Request for Proposals (RFPs).
Anyone responsible for creating RFPs

Here’s what you need:

Whatever setup you use to capture your ideas (laptop, pen and paper, whiteboard, etc.) but make sure it’s kept in a place that you can refer back to

The steps:

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15 Jul, 2021

Putting Equity in the RFP Process

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T21:10:56-04:00July 15th, 2021|Categories: Consulting|Tags: consulting, Equity|0 Comments

When I first started doing client work, I responded to a lot of Requests for Proposals (RFPs), spending hours a day on the process (or on the weekends when I was working a 9-to-5.)

At some point, I asked myself, “Is this really what I’ll have to do to get clients?”

More importantly, “Is this a good use of my time?”

I’ve already written about how I feel about the RFP process. In fact, I’ve slowed down on responding to RFPs altogether as a time management tactic and to prioritize current work.

Fortunately, I’m at a point where responding to RFPs is optional. Plus, I see more colleagues choosing not to participate in this process.. One reason being that the majority of my colleagues (and myself) get more work via referrals and networking than RFPs.

I’ll admit I initially didn’t like the RFP process because I grew weary of spending hours putting together what I thought was a good proposal only to not even get a “thanks, but no thanks” back.

However, whether my proposal was selected or not, I still walked away believing that there’s a better way to go about finding people to lead projects.

While I don’t respond to as many RFPs, I still do look at them, and I’ve notice something interesting.

Organizations are becoming increasingly better at recognizing what I’ll refer to as data collection fatigue, being mindful of inundating program participants, grantee partners, and other stakeholders with requests for completing surveys, being in focus groups, etc., while also ensuring that data collection activities aren’t time consuming.

Organizations recognize this now because their stakeholders are complaining about it.

Does this mean that consultants aren’t complaining? We are, yet organizations aren’t shifting towards creating RFP processes that are transparent, less time consuming, and collaborative.

The RFP process may be a standard way to seek out consultants to work with, but it’s not an equitable process. Before your organization sends out the RFP for its next project, evaluate your RFP based on consultant complaints:

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Ask Nicole: Prepping for Your Consultant/Partner Discovery Call

Ask Nicole: How Do I Avoid Mission Creep?

Ask Nicole: Hire a Consultant vs. Do it Yourself

Try This: The RFP “YES” Checklist

Putting Equity in the RFP Process

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