Pros
Clients are great; what better missions are there? Work was challenging, interesting and gratifying. Worked with super-smart, dedicated coworkers. Collaboration between Products and Professional Services was becoming more frequent and extremely positive.
Cons
Professional Services is dying. Consultants are treated like time-card punchers: hours, hours, hours. Have long-term experience, deep fundraising knowledge? Don’t care. Find innovative solutions to problems; save client some hours? Don’t care (that’s actually bad). There is lip-service paid to these things, but when it comes down to evaluations, nobody cares. It’s ultimately not about clients and customer satisfaction, it’s about billing. Customer satisfaction IS important if you can still bill ludicrous hours, but that’s not possible if you ever want to sleep. Nonprofits value experience and knowledge of their industry and business practices. Professional Services has gone out of its way to get rid of/drive out consultants who had those qualities because they didn’t take marching orders and valued the ability to be creative in their work. Creativity is a bad word now. Don’t take a job in Professional Services unless you want to be bullied, brow beaten, and undervalued.
