Pricing

There are several reasons why a consulting team like ours could be of benefit to you. Here are just a few:

A. Your project is unique or time bound. Why hire a full time person for a project that needs unique expertise, or for a project that will and should end?

B. The depth of work is not enough to justify the costs of substantial staffing. If your current work can be handled in a much smaller monthly engagement, why hire?

C. Your organization or its fundraising/grant writing efforts are in start-up or turnaround stages. You need help with building capacity, fundraising plans, initial fundraising initiatives and internal systems, and a team to implement them, and the costs of a full-time person do not justify the work that is needed at this phase. A consultant can help you get through these periods and set up your new leader for success.

D. The engagement you seek is to bridge a period of transition, or to give the Board and/or CEO more time to consider next steps.

E. You want to create a level playing field for an upcoming vacancy; appointing an internal “heir” to the position creates the exact opposite dynamic. 

F. The costs of staff are expensive, especially for small to mid-sized shops. Despite your best efforts, you find it hard to attract talent for the salary you can afford to pay.

G. The labor pool is mostly less-experienced generalists, but you need someone with more experience and expertise, who knows the industry, to help guide you, manage higher-level work, or to serve as a mentor for your less experienced team members. 

H. To right-size talent and staffing with the actual work of a position. Hiring a “director” level staff member for a 1-person shop does not make good business or financial sense. Most people excel at some tasks but not at others, and a more experienced staff member will cost you more even if the bulk of their time is spent on entry or mid-level work, which is often the case. A consultant can serve in the higher role, freeing your resources to hire at a lower level for the work you really need completed. 

I. You want stable, predictable, high-quality work. Raise the Bar takes a team-based approach to sourcing our talent for you. At least two people are always assigned to your account, ensuring that we are always available to meet your needs, no matter the issues that arise in the workplace or in life.

J. You want to save money and improve results. While the cost of a consultant may seem higher per hour, we find that we can complete more work than a full-time staff member in a fraction of that time, thereby lowering your overall costs while providing a better quality, more successful solution for you.

Well, it depends what services you are inquiring about.

Services like strategic planning, facilitation, or other project-based services can range from $2,500 to $25,000 or more, depending on whether you are looking for a 1-day retreat verses a 6-month strategic planning process that culminates in a multi-day session with a 3-year plan.

If you are looking for a consultant to assist with an ongoing engagement, whether that is fractional staffing for fundraising or grant writing, plan one-quarter to three-quarters of the cost of a full-time staff person, depending on the depth of our service.

For larger fundraising campaigns, plan to spend about 10% of the goal of the campaign on consulting support.

For Interim CEO and C-Suite engagements, dedicate the same amount of funding you planned to spend on executive compensation to fund your interim executive.

Raise the Bar Consulting will write government grants as a single project. For all other work, and barring unique circumstances, we prefer to focus our energies on building longer term engagements with clients. Why? Because that is how we are successful together.

Relationship building is the key to successful fundraising and grant writing, not only between you and your constituents, but between our team and yours. To best work for and with you, our team invests time to get to know your organizational culture, values, workflow, and programs – time that pays off overall, helping organizations to make transformational change in leadership and programming, and raise millions of dollars for causes our clients hold dear. 

Think of it like baseball: we want to help you win your World Series, starting by building an enterprise that makes both base hits and home runs, wins games, and strives for excellence, rather than just getting your batter to first base. Longer term engagements make that possible.