Expertise on Demand: Toward a Leaner Nonprofit

It goes without saying that local nonprofits who are trying to achieve unlikely good are often strapped for cash.

Every spending decision is scrutinized. A growing payroll is burdensome.

But nonprofits need talent, and hiring skilled employees is costly.

Every organization wants to have employees with specialized skills. These specializations often include legal, financial, human resources, technical, and other miscellaneous talents.

The challenge is that individuals with highly specialized skills are costly.

In the earliest phase of a startup's development, especially a nonprofit, it is helpful to hire generalists. Generalists can efficiently and flexibly transition between various types of work duties.

Specialists, on the other hand, prefer to focus on their area of expertise and can easily become frustrated when given generalized duties.

Additionally, the number of hours needed for a specialization may be limited. How much legal work do you need each month? Do you have a full-time load of responsibilities to justify a human resources hire?

It will be costly to hire people with specialized skills and experience. For this reason, you might strongly consider outsourcing specialized skills.

Sometimes the right person for your organization might not be an employee at all.

A few years ago, Logos Academy grew to a level of structural complexity, with numerous legal entities, financial operations, and audits. We realized we needed someone to serve as our Chief Financial Officer (CFO). The challenge was that we didn’t necessarily have a full-time role and would struggle to afford someone at a full-time CFO salary.

For this reason, we hired a reputable firm to serve as a fractional CFO. At a fraction of the cost, we have leveraged numerous consultants from 2R Consulting to build maturity into our accounting operations.

We have used other firms to provide HR and technical support.

Before you go hire that specialized skill, ask yourself, “Can I outsource this specialization to get a better result for a fraction of the cost?”

Not every skill needs to be in-house. Maybe consider hiring expertise on-demand.