Consultants for Good

A membership community for consultants and coaches who work with nonprofits, founded in 2018 and describing itself as the largest community of mission-driven consultants anywhere. It runs nationally, with a recurring in-person day in San Francisco.

Who it's actually for

The independent consultant who has no colleagues. Founder Lauren Andraski started C4G after failing to find a place where she could ask questions and share opportunities, in her words, "without worrying about looking like an expert." That sentence is the whole membership proposition, and if it describes your working life, this is the most direct fit on our list.

It also serves nonprofit staff who need to find and vet a consultant, and foundation leaders funding capacity work. There is a searchable consultant directory, which is genuinely useful if you are the person at a small nonprofit who has been told to find a strategy consultant by Friday.

It is a weaker fit if you want a Bay Area community specifically. C4G is a national organization with a mostly online center of gravity, and the local programming is thinner than the calendar first suggests.

What they run

A full event calendar every month: conversations, learning sessions, and virtual gatherings, plus in-person meetups in a handful of cities.

In San Francisco the anchor is the C4G Co-Working Day at Trellis, which has run several editions. That is the one to know about locally, and it is open beyond the membership.

The organization absorbed Philanthroforce in 2023, which added webinars, a job board, the consultant directory and client matching, and took on members from the Wheelhouse Directory in 2024.

What it costs

There is a free tier, which is the part worth knowing: a limited directory listing plus the consultant newsletter, at no cost and with no trial clock.

Paid consultant membership is $200 every three months, which they present as $67 a month, or $600 a year, presented as $50 a month. Both include monthly virtual events and on-demand content, an enhanced public directory listing, the email and Slack groups, job opportunities matched to your specialties, and the ability to post your own articles and resources. There is a free trial on both.

Separate memberships exist for nonprofits and for foundations, priced separately. The co-working day at Trellis has run at around $20 and is open beyond the membership.

Where

Online, mostly. In-person in San Francisco at Trellis, 981 Mission Street, plus meetups in other cities including Austin and Chicago.

How to start

Take the free listing first. It costs nothing, puts you in the directory where nonprofits go looking, and gets you the newsletter, which is enough to judge whether the paid tier is worth $600 a year.

Then go to a Co-Working Day at Trellis, around $20, before committing to anything. A working day with other consultants will tell you within an hour whether this is your crowd.