Selecting the right consultant: Evaluating proposals

by Foundations Nonprofits School Districts Schools Social Enterprise

Occasionally, clients will reach out to us with an ask. Through our platform, they have sourced proposals from several similarly well-qualified consultants, and they are having a hard time deciding between the options. Do we have any guidance for them on selecting the right consultant?

Some quick context on Catalyst:Ed for those of you who are unfamiliar with our work: We are a technology-enabled service that matches schools, school systems and education nonprofits with vetted consultants for short-term, mission-critical needs. This blog post is an effort to crystallize some of the lessons we’ve learned so far into two key strategies for education leaders looking to select consultants. Each of these strategies is based on not just our experience helping almost a hundred education organizations match up with expert consultants, but also our individual experiences as education leaders and consultants.

What’s an evaluation scorecard?

The evaluation scorecard is a simple matrix that helps you keep track of how each consultant lines up on the selection criteria that matter the most to you. There are some similarities with the evaluation scorecards that many education leaders use when hiring full-time staff. For instance, you will want to evaluate consultants’ qualifications as demonstrated by previous accomplishments. However, there are some dissimilarities as well. In particular, you will want to check for criteria – such as the proposed approach and budget – that are especially relevant for project-based work.

Our evaluation scorecard had humble beginnings. When we first launched our services, we relied on Google Drive to share consultant profiles and project proposals with clients. The earliest version of the evaluation scorecard was just a simple summary table with the names of interested consultants along with their locations, budgets and a checklist with a yes/no response to whether they met key selection criteria. Once we had a technology platform, we eliminated the summary table, since the information was relatively easy to access. Much to our surprise, our clients missed it. Some of them even re-purposed the summary table into an evaluation scorecard to help them score consultants and their proposals. We knew it was time to bring it back – but this time, we would expressly structure it as an evaluation scorecard.

Determining the evaluation criteria in your scorecard

Download scorecard

We’ve put together a simple evaluation scorecard template that you can use and tailor to meet the needs of your project. To download our template, click the link above.

Our evaluation scorecard includes some specific criteria that we’ve found to be especially relevant to project-based work. Consider it a starter template – you’ll want to make it your own by determining which of the criteria to include in your scorecard. How do you decide which criteria to include? Ideally, your selection criteria should flow directly from your project scope. This is one of the reasons why at Catalyst:Ed, we invest time upfront developing clear and detailed project scopes for our clients that outline the why (the problem and definition of success), what (key activities and deliverables) and who (must-have and nice-to-have consultant qualifications) of the project.

Below, we provide additional detail on our included criteria and some of the factors that we encourage our clients to consider as they score consultants. Note that we do not recommend that you include all of these in the scorecard. Instead, pick and choose the ones that are most relevant to your project.

Consultant qualifications:

  • Domain area expertise: Has the consultant worked on similar projects before? Is the consultant’s work on these projects directly relevant to the work required on your project? If work samples were provided, do they match with your expectations?
  • Consulting experience: Has the consultant advised other similar organizations before? If not, is there evidence suggesting that the consultant can be successful in advising your organization? For newly minted consultants who may bring strong domain expertise, is there evidence they can transfer their expertise to new unfamiliar contexts?
  • Other project-relevant competencies: Does the consultant demonstrate other competencies critical to the success of the project (e.g., strong project management skills, written communication skills, existing networks/relationships, etc.)?
  • Bandwidth: Does the consultant have the capacity to engage in this work in the manner that it requires? How much time are they willing to dedicate to your project? What else do they have going on right now? Can they work within your deadlines and time constraints?

Proposed Approach:

  • Structure: Does the proposal include all the information you requested?
  • Content: Does the proposal present the right combination of vision and detail? Are the specific activities, deliverables, and timeline aligned with your expectations and do they seem feasible? Does the proposal include any new ideas that you hadn’t considered before?
  • Presentation: Has the consultant clearly and compellingly described how they will accomplish the work set out in the project? Do the writing and the overall presentation reflect the consultant’s comfort and expertise in the project area?

Budget:

  • Price: Is the budget within your desired range? How does it compare to budgets proposed by other consultants? If it’s more expensive, what does the additional money get you? Has the consultant provided adequate detail on how the budget was arrived at? Are all significant incidental expenses (e.g., travel) accounted for?
  • Structure: Is the proposed budget structure (fixed price or hourly) aligned to your own requirements?

Other criteria: This category of odds-and-ends captures other criteria that, depending on the specific project, might be helpful for you to consider:

  • Location: More relevant for projects where significant in-person work is required.
  • Prior experience with your organization: Relevant in cases where having organization context and prior relationships within the organization is important to the success of the project.
  • Brand: Relevant in certain kinds of high-profile projects where the involvement of a high-profile consultant or consulting firm can add to the credibility of the project.
  • Engagement Style: Relevant in projects where the organization requires a certain level of engagement from the consultant.
  • Alignment with other organizational goals and values: Examples might include mission-alignment, increasing diversity or promoting local/small businesses.

a spreadsheet with a scorecard template

Using the evaluation scorecard

Tab 2 of our downloadable worksheet (accessible at the bottom of this post) is a sample annotated and filled-in scorecard to illustrate how it works in practice. You will want to fill out the matrix for each consultant along with each criterion in your scorecard. The “Notes” section is a place for you to jot down any thoughts, concerns or follow-up questions.

Finally, we leave you with some FAQs:

Can we use this scorecard to evaluate consultant teams? Absolutely. If there are multiple people involved, we recommend that you score them on the experience and expertise they bring collectively.

Do we need to have a detailed scoring rubric as well? Only if you want to. While a detailed scoring rubric might be helpful, developing one takes time. For the purposes of selecting consultants, we’ve found that even a basic scorecard with a “yes/no” scale helps clients narrow down the consultant pool in a systematic way.

Do we have to use the evaluation scorecard to evaluate consultants? It’s entirely up to you. The scorecard is fundamentally just a tool to help you through selection. But here’s what we’ve found: when clients go about the selection process in a systematic way, they are more likely to critically review proposals, ask the right questions during the interview process and identify relevant trade-offs. They are also more likely to be comfortable about their eventual selection and – research shows – less likely to yield to their unconscious biases.

What happens next? Once you’ve reviewed each candidate’s resume, proposal, and relevant work samples and evaluated them against your decision matrix, you should be able to identify your top 3 to interview.

Download scorecard

We’ve put together a simple evaluation scorecard template that you can use and tailor to meet the needs of your project. To download our template, click the link above.

[Ask Catalyst:Ed] Fixed price or hourly? Structuring your project contract

by General

Here are two things that happened earlier this week:

From an email:
Expert: “Hey, the project scope says the project will have a deliverables-based contract. Can you explain what that means?”

From a scoping conversation with a client:
Catalyst:Ed: “Do you have any thoughts on whether this should be a fixed price contract or an hourly contract?”
Client: (silence)

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Contract terminology can get confusing. So here’s a quick primer (and we’ll do a blog post with a deeper dive into the not-always-fun world of consulting contracts sometime soon).

Contracts typically tend to be of three types:

  • Deliverables-based (aka fixed price contracts)
  • Hourly contracts (aka time-and-materials or variable contracts)
  • Retainers

Here’s where the rubber hits the road – the specific type of contract you sign for a project determines how you get paid.

For deliverables-based contracts, the client agrees to pay a fixed, pre-negotiated amount when the consultant completes and hands over the deliverable. The contract, in such cases, will lay out:

  • The deliverables (interim and final)
  • The timeline for completing the deliverables)
  • The amount payable by the client for each deliverable

Here’s what that could look like for a hypothetical strategic planning project:


Project start date: 07/01/16

Deliverable Format Due date Amount Invoice date

Report summarizing key research findings

Word doc

08/01/16

$5,000

08/15/16

Draft deck with key findings, recommendations and next steps

PowerPoint presentation

09/01/16

$10,000

09/15/16

Final deck with key findings, recommendations and next steps

PowerPoint presentation

09/15/16

$5,000

09/30/16

Implementation plan with key tasks, milestones, responsibilities and timelines

Excel spreadsheet

10/15/16

$2,500

10/30/16

The expectation here is that the consultant gets paid the fixed amount once the deliverables are submitted, irrespective of how much time she actually ends up spending on putting the deliverable together.

In hourly contracts, on the other hand, clients pay consultants based on the actual amount of time spent on the project. The payment period can be monthly or fortnightly. For a monthly contract, the consultant adds up the total amount of time spent on the project in the previous month (in education, time is often billed in 15 minute increments). The total number of hours is then multiplied by the agreed-on hourly rate to arrive at the invoiced amount.

A related type of contract that we often see in education is the hourly contract with a “not to exceed” clause. The expectation here is that the client pays the consultant based on actual hours spent up to a certain pre-agreed amount.

And finally, we have retainers. In these kinds of contracts, the client agrees to pay consultants a certain amount every month, with the expectation that the consultant will put in a certain amount of work. So, what kind of contract is best for the client and what kind is best for the consultant? Well, it depends on the project. When we scope projects for clients, we typically categorize 60% of projects as fixed price ones and 30% as hourly ones, with the remaining 10% being categorized as retainers.

In a perfectly predictable world populated by robots and with full information, a fixed price contract would work in the same way as an hourly contract. Unfortunately, we live in a world where circumstances change, individual capabilities vary and new information is often revealed. In general, when the project scope is clear and deliverables are well-defined, fixed price contracts work well. They offer clients the assurance that the work will get done without the budget getting out of hand. Consultants often find them easier to administer [1], plus they benefit if they end up doing the work more efficiently than they had originally budgeted.

For projects with a more ambiguous scope, hourly contracts might work out to be much better. For instance, one of our nonprofit clients needed several different grant proposals and reports written during a period of staff transition and did not know how easy or difficult it would be to find the necessary information. In this case, the hourly contract protected the nonprofit from paying too much if the information was easy to access, while at the same time, protecting the consultant from being paid too little if finding the information required a lot of legwork [2].

Retainers are best suited for interim and part-time consulting roles. They offer consultants a stable source of revenue while capping the monthly cost to clients.

Finally, here’s a handy little chart laying out the differences.

Fixed price Variable Retainer

Also known as

Deliverables-based

Hourly OR Time-and-materials

Monthly fee

Best suited for

Well defined projects

Projects with evolving or ambiguous scopes

Interim or part-time roles

Invoicing timeline

After “product” is delivered

Usually monthly

Usually monthly

I hope this was helpful! Feel free to add your thoughts or additional questions in the comments section below.

Notes:
[1] Fixed price contracts require more time up-front in estimating the amount of work needed to complete the work. However, they require less effort in terms of ongoing time-tracking.
[2] Even though time-tracking is not required for fixed price contracts, it’s a good discipline to follow if you’re a consultant. You’ll often be surprised at how “off” you were when you estimated that the work would take X hours to complete.

We hope you found this post useful! We’d love to have you join the conversation:

  • Respond: What’s your take on the different kinds of contracts? Any hard contracting lessons learned over the years? Share your thoughts in the comments below or tweet us at @_catalyst_ed. #edchat
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“Ask Catalyst:Ed” is a new section on our blog. This is where we’ll be posting quick, practical responses to all the great questions that we receive from our community of users.

Here’s how we see this working:

  • Use the comments section of blog posts to send us your questions. You can also email them to us at info@catalyst-ed.org to tweet them to @_catalyst_ed.
  • The questions can be anything related to consulting in the education sector. We’ll be covering questions from both education organizations as well as consultants. Deep and mundane questions are equally welcome!
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  • Please feel free to jump in and respond with your own perspectives and advice in the comments section of each Q&A. We do want this to be a community resource – and a conversation rather than a broadcast!

About us: Catalyst:Ed connects education organizations with vetted experts for short-term, mission-critical needs. More than a directory of experts, we set up projects for success by investing time and resources into scoping out projects (at no cost to organizations!) and matching projects with experts who are the right fit. To learn more about how Catalyst:Ed can help you gain quick, reliable and affordable access to expertise for your most pressing requirements, please visit our website. Ready to get help? Schedule a needs assessment call. Want to join our network of experts? Apply to join here.