Education consulting in 9 sentences

by General

A few times a month, we hear from someone considering independent consulting, wanting to know (1) what they should expect, (2) if it might be the right fit for them, and (3) how they should go about it. This is our effort to distill our thought process into a resource that we can direct folks to. We answer the first question in this post. We’ll get to questions 2 and 3 in later posts. So here it is, our very first listicle “Education consulting in 9 (mostly true) sentences” [1]:

  1. Consulting can be a lot of fun.

You get to work on interesting projects related to topics that you care deeply about. You learn a ton. You meet and work with lots of people and expand your network. You get to see the inner workings of many different organizations doing important work. You have flexibility of time and place.

2.     It can also be a drag.

You sometimes work on projects that you care very little about so you can pay the bills. You spend hours on tedious tasks like transcribing notes, planning meeting agendas and accounting. There are weeks when you meet barely anyone. You realize that even the shiniest of organizations show signs of strain. And for every Tuesday afternoon that you take off to play tennis, there will be a Saturday evening where you’ll be working furiously to complete a deliverable that’s due first thing Monday morning.

3.     Mostly, it’s a roller coaster.

The first couple of years are usually full of uncertainty. You’ll rarely have the luxury of knowing what your next six months at work will look like. Veteran consultants also often talk about the feast-or-famine phenomenon. On some days, you’ll be burning the candle at both ends. On other days, you’ll be refreshing your inbox for the nth time, wondering why no one has emailed you yet. Be prepared – and use the downtime to work on your business and yourself (write a blog post, take an online course, file away those expense receipts).

4.    Getting clients is often harder than you expect.

Plan to spend a third of your time on business development. The actual process of drumming up work can look different depending on the consultant: some write proposals, others network at events or build their reputations as thought leaders. Figure out the hustle that comes most naturally to you and embrace the fact that you will be spending significant amounts of (non-billable) time getting clients.

5.    You’ll get rejected. A lot.

This can be incredibly hard for most new consultants. You’ll write proposals and never hear back. You’ll have detailed and enthusiastic conversations with prospective clients about super interesting projects – that never take off. Don’t take it personally. Sometimes when you’re rejected, it’s a sign that you need to get better at what you do. And sometimes it’s just the luck of the draw. When something doesn’t work out the way you think it should, dust off, ask for feedback, look for patterns, and act when you must. 

6.    It can get lonely.

Working as an independent consultant can be isolating. Even self-sufficient professionals can find it difficult to sustain their energy and perspective when removed from the give-and-take of team relationships. Many consultants will talk about the breakthrough moment when they realized that being independent did not have to mean being alone. Reach out to other consultants. Build your own posse – folks who can help when you need advice or feedback or a sympathetic ear when you need to vent.

7.    Handing over can be hard.

The hardest part of being a consultant can sometimes be at the very end of a project, when it’s time to hand over a project that you’ve lived and breathed for several months. There’s always the fear that once you’re no longer around to move the project along, it will stall and your presentation/plan/report will gather dust on a shelf. Identify steps you can take before you move on – like identifying an internal project champion, developing a clear plan with next steps and ensuring key team members have the information and skills they need to carry on the work – but then, cultivate a spirit of zen and just let go.  

8.    Impact can be squishy to define.

When you’ve worked on 8 different projects with 7 different clients in less than 12 months, it can start to feel disorienting. Unlike a full-time role, where you’re usually building towards a goal, consulting projects can feel like a lot of scattered efforts – and you can end up questioning whether your work is adding up to anything. For some consultants, the answer lies in focusing their work on one or two high-need areas, so that over a period of time they are building a body of work. For others, it lies in focusing on an intermediate outcome – such as a happy client, a more capable team, a refocused organization. Either way, over a period of time, the dots start to connect and a pattern of impact emerges. 

9.    It gets better.

If #1 is the reason that people get into consulting, #9 is the reason they end up staying. If you stick around long enough and do the right things (more on this later), you’ll slowly start getting projects. Your proposals and work products will start looking better and better. You’ll develop new relationships: with clients who vouch for you and consultants who reach out to you asking if you want to partner with them on projects. You’ll realize that you’ve learned so much – about your domain of expertise, about working with clients, about yourself. Slowly, the projects that you crave to work on start coming to you –projects where you can leverage your best skills to have a real impact on kids.

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[1] Why “mostly true”? Because while most of these sentences will hold true for most consultants, it is unlikely that all will hold true for all consultants. 

What’s been your experience with consulting? Share your thoughts in the comments below or tweet us @_catalyst_ed. #edinsights

Coming up:

In part 2: Is consulting right for you?

In part 3: You’re ready to give it a shot: What’s next?

Want to get alerted when we post these? Sign up for updates here

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
  • Share: Here’s a pre-populated tweet to help you share our post: New post from @_catalyst_ed: The difference b/w fixed price and hourly contracts #edchat #consultants bit.ly/2cM5AV6
  • Connect: Join us in our mission to make education consulting more impactful. We’ll be sharing lessons from our journey on this blog. To subscribe, sign up here.

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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!
  • Every week, we’ll pick up a question and do our best to answer it using this blog. If you want regular updates, don’t forget to subscribe to our list here.
  • 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.

How to write a compelling proposal

by General

If you ask consultants about the least favorite part of their jobs, proposal writing usually ranks in the top three. Drafting a proposal can be an unpleasant task for many reasons: it can seem impersonal and one-sided, you often don’t have as much information about the project as you’d like and pitching yourself in writing can feel uncomfortable.

But there are consultants who have learned to love the task. The act of writing a proposal forces them to slow down and pay attention: to internalize the needs of the project and determine whether they are the right fit. The proposal also becomes a launch pad for a meaningful discussion with the client and ensures alignment between client and consultant before the real work starts. Finally, for consultants who don’t have extensive networks or a readily recognizable brand, a thoughtfully crafted proposal becomes the opening that invites a second look from a high profile.

At Catalyst:Ed, a platform that connects education organizations with vetted experts for short-term, mission-critical projects, we’ve come to appreciate the power of a well-crafted proposal. It’s part science, part art. And we’ve put together this quick primer – gleaned from our collective experiences – on proposals for the newly-minted and still-hesitant among you.

The ingredients

Request for Proposals or RFPs (also known as project scopes in Catalyst:Ed lingo) typically ask for some variation of the following:

  • Proposed approach and work plan
  • Capability statement
  • Budget and payment schedule

While these terms can sound officious and intimidating, they essentially translate into a description of three things:

  1. How do you intend to tackle the project requirements and by when
  2. Why you’re the right fit for the project as evidenced by the skills and experiences that you (and your team) bring to the table
  3. What you’d like to get paid for your work and when

Putting these elements down on paper is good discipline. Even if the client and you have a long-standing relationship and you’re asked to do this “one quick project”, it’s probably a good idea for you to follow this structure and put down your thoughts before you get started on the work.

Putting it together

So let’s say you’ve decided to take the plunge and write out the proposal. What are some things you need to keep in mind that can maximize your chances of being selected?

Gauge your fit: This seems pretty obvious, but is worth repeating. Look at what the project is seeking. Ask whether (a) you’re interested, (b) you’re available and (c) you have most of the required skills and experiences. Note that we say, most, not all. Like job descriptions, proposal requirements sometimes include nice-to-have qualifications as well. It might be well worth it for you to respond to an RFP as long as you can check off most of the boxes.

Respond to the RFP you have, not the one you’d like: Far too often, clients reject proposals because they feel the consultants “just didn’t get it”. So here’s a tip: Read the RFP. Reflect. Repeat. Then, when you are ready to draft your proposal, (a) make sure you’re providing all requested components, (b) proposal an approach that makes sense given the task at hand and (c) underscore skills and experiences you have that are directly relevant to the project and show that you’ve worked with similar organizations before.

Research the organization: A quick Google search can often reveal a lot about the organization, its leadership and its driving philosophy as well as any larger challenges that it might be facing. These, in turn, can help you understand the “why” behind the project, gauge your own fit and tailor your proposal to what the client’s looking for.

Chunk it up: Break up large, complex projects into manageable phases, each with its own associated tasks, timeline, deliverable and budget. Thus, a strategic planning project might be divided into three phases:

Phases I. Current state analysis II. Draft and final recommendations III. Implementation plan


Key tasks

  • Task 1
  • Task 2
  • Task 3
  • Task 1
  • Task 2
  • Task 3
  • Task 1
  • Task 2
  • Task 3


Deliverable

Deck summarizing research findings and key insights

Final deck with findings and recommendations

Worksheet with detailed project plan


Timeline

2 months: 9/1 – 10/30

1 month: 11/1 – 11/30

2 weeks: 12/1 – 12/15

Chunking up projects offers several advantages: First, it makes it clearer to the client and to you how the work will get accomplished. Second, the mid-project milestones create opportunities to review progress, realign expectations and – when things go well – create a sense of momentum.

Pull together the right team: The pros know that consulting is sometimes best played as a team sport. More complex projects, in particular, may require a mix of skills and experiences – and even if you’re an independent consultant, it might be a good idea to pull together a team to be competitive. At Catalyst:Ed, for instance, we introduced an evaluation expert to an early childhood expert for an impact evaluation of an early childhood program. Individually, they were competent, but together, they made a dream team. When looking at the project requirements, think about what you bring to the table – and then think about who else you might partner with so that as a team, you bring the full set of capabilities needed to drive a project to success.

Aim for a price in the right ballpark: Pricing is a whole other topic that we’ll delve into in another blog post. But here are some quick guidelines:

  • Ask yourself “What will it take for me to get the work done”. This will involve some measure of breaking the work down into specific tasks and estimating how much time each task will take. Multiply total hours by your hourly rate to get to your desired budget.
  • Ask yourself “How much will the organization be willing to pay for this work”. Sometimes, you might find this information in the RFP (about 50% of the scopes we create at Catalyst:Ed have an estimated budget range associated with them). If the info is not readily available, substitute research and common sense. True story: A nonprofit with an annual budget of $750,000 received a proposal for a strategic planning project with a budget of $125,000. Needless to say, the client did not select the option, and reached out instead to Catalyst:Ed to source other, more reasonably priced options.
  • Find a balance between your desired budget and the client’s feasible budget. You can do this by paring down the scope of work – maybe do one workshop instead of two or substitute a survey for full-length interviews. Or you can offer a discount on your usual hourly rate. Or you can bring in someone at a junior level and outsource some of the more mundane tasks (scheduling!) for a lower price.
  • Finally, don’t worry about offering the lowest price. In 9 cases out of 10, we have seen the client picking the option who offers the best value rather than the option who offers the lowest price. Organizations are savvy and care about the quality that they are getting. Instead, offer the price at which you are prepared to do the work.

Tap into your enthusiasm: Clients can usually zero in on proposals where the consultant is truly excited about the opportunity to work on the project. It might be the thoughtfulness that has gone into the crafting of the proposal. It might be the passion for and knowledge of the domain area. Or it might be the additional suggestions that expand the potential impact of the project. I wouldn’t recommend faking the enthusiasm – it’s too much work! – but if you’re genuinely excited about a project, don’t be afraid to let it show.

The “fixings”

What about the format? Here are a few quick thoughts:

  • We’ve seen folks submit documents and presentations. In general, documents work better. They leave less open to (mis)interpretation.
  • Use formatting (bullets, bolds, italics) to enable easy reading. But please use your judgment. Too much formatting can be a distraction. And please avoid the urge to bold, italicize and underline the same sentence.
  • Tables, graphics, etc. are nice-to-haves, not must-haves, so include them depending on your own skill and the project requirement. Having said that, if you specialize in a specific area, it might be worthwhile to invest some time in developing a simple graphic that demonstrates your expertise.
  • Although cover pages are by no means necessary, please do include the following in your document: the project name, the client name (assuming it’s not hidden) and your name.
  • If you plan to include lots of acronyms, a list upfront is always appreciated.
  • For page length, use the guidance in the RFP. In general, shorter, simpler projects (<$10,000) should rarely require proposals of more than a page or two. More complex projects may require proposals of about 5-10 pages (although at Catalyst:Ed, we rarely recommend proposals of longer than 5 pages). For multi-million dollar projects at the state or federal level, the 50-page limit is often the norm.

Investments, and not expenditures
One reason why consultants don’t like proposals is because time spent on crafting one can often feel like it’s “wasted”. It’s not billable, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll get selected.

But there’s another way of thinking about it. A veteran consultant in our network thinks of proposals as investments and not as expenditures. “I’m building my own infrastructure and creating equity,” she says. “Each time I draft a proposal, I’m creating content that can be re-purposed for other similar proposals. I’m also investing in my brand and building networks. For new-to-me organizations and people, in particular, it becomes an invitation to a conversation and the start of a relationship that will hopefully continue, regardless of whether or not I am engaged on this particular project.”

To get you started, we’ve put together a very simple proposal format that you can play around with and tailor to meet the needs of your project. To access it, sign up below to download the proposal template.

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

  • Respond: What tips do you have for crafting killer proposals? What do you like/dislike about the process? Share your thoughts in the comments below or tweet us @_catalyst_ed. #edchat
  • Share: Here’s a pre-populated tweet to help you share our post: New post from @_catalyst_ed: The 3 Elements of a Compelling Project Proposal #edchat #consultants #therightexpertise bit.ly/2c22GgM
  • Connect: Join us in our mission to make education consulting more impactful. We’ll be sharing lessons from our journey on this blog. To subscribe, sign up here.

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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.