We are currently hiring for a consultant to join our team full-time.
PENN Creative Strategy guides nonprofit organizations through strategic planning and organizational change. Over three decades we have worked with more than 100 of them, most in human services: economic mobility, immigrant integration, housing stability, youth development, workforce opportunity. Our clients are closest to the people most affected by systemic inequity, and are the organizations the consulting market most often underserves.
We are adding a full-time Consultant to our team. The role will run discovery and analysis from the start, move into facilitation within the first year, and lead engagements by year three. There is also a longer arc: the principal intends to step back gradually from full time delivery over the coming years, and her intention is that ownership eventually passes to people who have built the firm alongside her. Whether that includes this role depends entirely on what happens over several years of work together.
Our work runs on judgment: reading a set of financials and a board minutes file and seeing the tension nobody has said out loud, then holding a room steady while people say it. That is learnable, and we intend to teach it. What we cannot teach is the instinct to see an unowned problem or task and pick it up. That is the thing we are screening for.
What we believe about this work
These are positions we take, and each has a cost. Someone who does not recognize themselves here will not be happy at PCS.
• The client decides. Our job is to make the choice clear, not to make it for them. If being the smartest person in the room is what you want from consulting, this will frustrate you.
• We name the hard things. The question a board has been circling for three years, said directly and with care. Conflict avoidance does not work here. Neither does bluntness.
• Appreciative, never judgmental. The people in our client organizations have worked under real constraint far longer than we have known them. The fastest way to lose standing here is to be clever at a client’s expense.
• Rigor over polish. No number we cannot defend, no finding we cannot source, and no reliance solely on tools – everything needs a human eye.
• Proximity earns trust. The communities our clients serve extend candor to consultants they recognize, and without that candor we are analyzing a partial picture. Proximity to those communities earns the trust that better work depends on, which makes it a prerequisite for our team.
• We tell each other the truth, including upward. You will be encouraged to challenge the project lead, before a deliverable goes out. Agreeableness, while pleasant, should never cancel our truth and opinion.
What you would do
Months 1 to 9
Document and financial review, assessment instruments, leadership and stakeholder interviews, synthesis. Drafting substantial sections of client briefs and strategic frameworks. Session materials. Co-facilitating defined segments by the end of this period.
Months 9 to 24
Discovery owned end to end. Full briefs and options memos with light editing. Co-facilitating planning committee sessions. Primary day to day client contact. Representing PCS with prospective clients and at sector convenings.
Year 3 and beyond
Leading engagements. Facilitating planning committees and board sessions independently. Originating work through your own relationships, with compensation that reflects it.
What we are looking for
• Five to ten years of experience in consulting, or in a role combining analysis with responsibility for client or stakeholder relationships in the nonprofit world.
• Something you have owned end to end. With a budget, a deadline, and consequences if it failed. Accountability for an outcome, not for a set of tasks.
• Analytical range. Financials you can form a defensible view on, survey questions that get honest answers, and the difference between a theme and a coincidence in interview data.
• Writing that carries an argument. Not polished corporate prose. Writing that says what it means in lay language and gives a reader something to decide.
• Steadiness when a conversation gets uncomfortable. Facilitation credentials welcome, not required. We invest in that training.
• Fluency in our clients’ world. The cultural competence to work across differences of race, class, language, and power.
• Resonance with the six positions above. Including the parts with a cost attached.
This is the wrong role for you if
• You are maintaining an independent practice and looking for supplemental work. We need someone whose availability is not something we negotiate against other clients.
• You cannot travel to client sites, primarily in the New York area. We begin every engagement in the client’s own building, and sessions happen in person.
• You want to stay behind the scenes. Within two years you are in front of clients, and eventually in front of boards.
Compensation, and how the path works
$70,000 to $85,000, plus health coverage, a 401K when vested, paid time off, professional development including facilitation certification, and a flexible hybrid schedule. The top of the band is for someone arriving with facilitation practice already in hand, or with a track record of winning work. Spanish or another language spoken by the communities our clients serve is a meaningful plus.No equity is attached to this offer, and nothing here creates an entitlement to any.
How to apply
We read every application ourselves, so this is built to be quick for both of us. No cover letter. Email info@penncreataivestrategy.com with the subject line Consultant Application - Your Name, attach your resume, and include four things:
1. The work sample, which we read first. Pick a nonprofit organization you know well. Name one strategic question you believe it is facing, why the question is strategic, and lay out the two or three real options you might offer. 400 words maximum. You do not need inside information; we are reading for how you think.
2. One example of ownership. A time you saw something that needed doing and did it without being asked, where it would have been reasonable not to. Tell us what it cost you. 200 words maximum.
3. What you need from a supervisor to thrive in this role. (in the body of the email)
4. Where in the salary band you are targeting, and why. One or two sentences. (in the body of the email)
Applications that exceed the word limits or leave out any of the four will not be read. Rolling review until the position is filled. PCS is women led and committed to a team that reflects the communities our clients serve. We are an equal opportunity employer, and hiring decisions are made on qualifications and fit for the work.