The Helping Industry’s Role in Alleviating Power Imbalances
Illustration by Jennifer Luxton
By John Brothers
5/24/2024
The nonprofit and philanthropic sectors are aimed at making the world a better place. While most of us dedicate each day to directly serving every facet of our society, there also exists an often-unrecognized parallel sector: the “helping industry” of the social sector. These are the consultants, evaluators, and technology providers whose business is focused on helping nonprofits and philanthropies get more strategic, informed, effective, and/or efficient in achieving their missions.
As nonprofit sector growth far outpaces other sectors, there has been a significant increase in the number of “helpers” to nonprofits organizations. In fact, servicing the nonprofit sector has become big business. According to the annual report on the nonprofit consulting industry by Prosal, in partnership with Tufts University and Consultants for Good, it is estimated that the total U.S. consulting industry to be approximately $330B a year, and with the nonprofit sector being 6% of total U.S. GDP, it is estimated that the nonprofit consulting industry to be between $10-20 billion dollars. In an even deeper look at a sub-section of this industry, the nonprofit software marketplace is expected to be worth approximately $4.8B dollars in 2024 and will grow by another billion by 2029.
While there are certainly many benefits offered by these supporting partners, the “helping” industry is not without its challenges. As trust-based philanthropy gains momentum across the U.S. and beyond, much of the conversations have focused on the role of funders in perpetuating problematic power dynamics in the social sector. As our local nonprofit organizations will attest, this power shift is long overdue. It is important to note, however, that the problems don’t exist solely within the philanthropic sector. In fact, the helping industry has also showcased behaviors that run counter to trust-based principles. Many times, these businesses profit on practices that can harm nonprofit organizations each day.
If you’re a nonprofit professional, it’s likely that you walk through your day encountering the helping industry. If you’re delivering a mission-critical service, you are probably part of a network that might provide training on best practices in your field, or you might use a technology-driven platform to document information about the people you serve. You may work with a fundraising consultant to amplify community voices and make the case for your organization’s impact to your donors.
In philanthropy, we both rely on these types of helpers, and often encourage our nonprofit partners to seek out help when they need it. For example, we may use a grants management system to manage our own data about current and prospective grantees; we may hire a strategist to conduct focus groups and glean insights from our community partners; or we’ll recruit an agency to help sharpen our communications and messaging. And, with a desire to offer support “beyond the check,” many funders will introduce their grantee partners to some of those same consultants and agencies to help them strengthen their work.
Taken at face value, this all seems positive. Unfortunately, however, the helping industry can also reinforce donor-centric behaviors and mindsets that run counter to the principles of trust-based philanthropy. You might have a grants professional network that over-focuses its offerings on helping its network toward appeasing donors and “winning” the grant. You might have a technology provider who over-commits their platform toward counting outputs rather than creating opportunities for iterative learning. There’s the governance consultant who promotes archaic board dogma that perpetuates distrustful, top-down power dynamics, or the strategy consultant who delivers a strategic plan full of buzzwords but doesn’t help the organization become more strategic and accountable.
Or more specifically, let’s focus on how the helping industry might be harmful as it relates to the intersection of technology and evaluation. In a review of over two dozen leading software providers to the nonprofit sector, the descriptions of the platforms most always promoted that their platform would help their organization either raise more money or meet the criteria of their donors. It was almost secondary that the platform helped the organization learn and advance those learnings towards more impact. For philanthropic technology and evaluation providers, it was even more challenging, as most of the providers propelled their philanthropy vendors to platforms that pushed and pulled their grantees to data requirements that run counter to trust-based philanthropy principles. Recently, as I was walking through a vendor marketplace at a national conference, an evaluation and technology vendor had large table signs highlighting how their product propelled trust-based relationships while the product manager exposed to the Foundation leader standing in front of me that their system would help “keep their grantees in-line”. While a gross case of “trust-washing” its an even more challenging display of how the helping industry can double-down on the most challenging anti-trust-based behaviors of the philanthropic sector.
Most technology and evaluation providers would say that they are merely following the wants of their philanthropic clients. In contrary discussions with several philanthropy leaders, they point to the limitations of their vendors and how they must work within the confines of what the vendor can provide. To us, it seems like finger-pointing between the two, with a limited sense of accountability to their nonprofit communities and the principles of trust-based philanthropy.
Moving Forward
In a nonprofit and philanthropic world that is somewhat guided by regulation, our helping industry counterparts are often unaccountable to similar regulation. While it is unlikely that formal regulation will govern the helping industry moving forward, stronger mechanisms can help the nonprofit and philanthropic sector self-regulate against the troublesome areas of the helping industry. I would encourage the following:
The Helping Industry should apply a trust-based lens to their own practices. While trust-based philanthropy often focuses on the role of grantmakers in alleviating power imbalances, vendors, and consultants play an important role in either reinforcing or reimagining harmful practices. Our helping industry needs to go through their own self-reflection on how their daily bedside manner might be harming the nonprofit community. Where might your offerings, platforms and practices cause harm, and how might you rethink your approach moving forward? If you encounter a client who may be perpetuating top-down power dynamics, you can push back and encourage them to consider ways to support nonprofits in learning, growing, and becoming the best version of themselves toward achieving their goals.
Philanthropy and nonprofit professionals can seek out helpers aligned with trust-based values. When seeking out contractors or agencies to support your work, start those conversations by discussing core values that drive your work. What do you want to achieve? What do you want to learn? And what is your North Star? Assess whether the people you are considering working with can help you support your vision in a way that is truly accountable to the communities you serve. And keep an eye out for red flags that don’t align with trust-based practices, for example, can technology platforms that are over-committed on year-to-year counting of program outcomes align to the goal of multi-year, general operating support?
Associations and networks should audit their vendor lists with a trust-based lens. Many associations and networks maintain vendor lists of helping organizations, and they host conferences that allow helping organizations to become vendors to present or information sources dedicated to our sector advertise these helpers on their mediums. All these efforts should ensure that who they promote are helping their networks and not harming them. Some of whom we have spoken with were encouraged by the idea that these network groups would do formal certifications of those helpers wanting to be previewed before their members, attendees, or readers.
Also, as we have both discussed our challenges with the helping industry with others, we have heard several really encouraging ideas, all steeped in the idea that our nonprofit partners should be the drivers of whether an organization is helping them or not. Ideas like having customers of the helping industry have a space to discuss their positive or challenging experiences, something like a “Yelp for Nonprofits”, similar to GrantAdvisor, but more tailored for impressions, feedback, and ratings on consultants and vendors who serve the sector. A peer-to-peer-regulation tool like this might encourage our helping industry partners to better align to the directions of our local nonprofits.
As the trust-based movement is both new and exciting for the sector, as a movement committed to learning we recognize that we are going to change as our sector changes. To that end, it is time for this movement to encompass the helping industry, hold them accountable and have this important part of sector join arms with us in making our world a better place while they also become a better version of themselves.
John Brothers is the president of the T. Rowe Price Foundation and president of T. Rowe Price Charitable