How Consultants Shape Nonprofits

Groundbreaking research illuminates the pivotal, problematic role of consultants in the nonprofit world.
The nonprofit sector leans heavily on consultants to guide strategic planning, advise on fundraising strategy, gather data on program effectiveness and more. Despite suspicion from some quarters about the quality and impact of this work, Dr. Leah Reisman's extensive research demonstrates that most consultants work diligently to customize and implement solutions for their nonprofit clients. However there are overlooked costs. How Consultants Shape Nonprofits explores how consultants reinforce problematic status-quo practices and ideas while prioritizing the opinions of people in power (nonprofit funders, leaders, etc.) over those of lower-level staff and communities. Consultants thus leave unaddressed some of the most pernicious structural problems in the nonprofit sector. The book's important conclusions about the problematic role of consultants in the nonprofit world are based on more than a year of ethnographic research and nearly 200 interviews with practitioners. Dr. Reisman concludes with guidance on how consultants, nonprofit leaders, and donors can better collaborate, and overcome traditional "blind spots" in the nonprofit-consultant relationship.