Giving Compass' Take:

• In this piece from Medium, William Bachman interviews Esther Kim, and independent, social sector consultant. They discuss the similarities and differences between consulting social sector and for-profit sector clients.

• Kim advises that consultants with a business background stick to their functions while recognizing their lack of knowledge when shifting to nonprofit sector clients. What business knowledge would be useful to bring to the nonprofit sector, and what would be less useful?

• To learn why it is important to test and prepare before attempting to affect social change, click here.

Esther Kim is an independent consultant based in San Francisco who focuses on serving clients in the social sector, including non-profits, philanthropies, and social enterprises. In our discussion we talk about the similiarities and differences between serving for-profit and non-for-profit clients.

Will Bachman: Your practice focuses on serving clients in the social sector, including non-profits, philanthropies, and social enterprises. Can you give me an overview?

Esther Kim: ... I primarily work with organizations that hope to have some kind of social impact with their work, whether that means helping children, or helping people get into jobs, or the environment. My clients span a broad range of social missions and a mix of non-profits of various sizes, and philanthropy, so funders of non-profits. I think I bring value to both sets of clients, as to non-profits I bring an understanding of how philanthropy works, and to philanthropy I bring some insight from working with organizations that are doing the work on the ground.

Have you found anything that particularly distinguishes working with non-profits and philanthropies from for-profit businesses?

One of the things I find most interesting is what they’re able to do with very limited resources, and the fact that they have often multiple stakeholders and goals. It’s not about making a profit and answering to shareholders. The goal is to help think through and plan and do something that is both core to and advancing their mission but also really tied into strategy. What works? What doesn’t? What has worked to date? It’s evidence based, like all of the things that are important for running a business, but applied to non-profits and philanthropy.

Read the full article about social sector consulting by William Bachman at Medium