Presenters:
Laura Keene; Keene Insights

Matt Feldmann; Goshen Education Consulting

Description:

As a program evaluator, are you thinking about going out on your own? For many, this is an exciting but intimidating prospect. This workshop will reveal the simple but essential design and start-up skills needed for success. Matt Feldmann and Laura Keene will lead this important introductory workshop that has been foundational to the development of many consulting practices and small internal independent evaluation shops. This workshop will provide you with a plan for how to initiate your independent consulting practice.

Learning Outcomes:

Learning Objective 1: Consultant Attributes

Learning Objective 2: Identifying and Marketing to your Niche

Learning Objective 3: Business Skills and Day to Day Management


Agenda and Learning Strategies:
The 3 hour workshop is divided into three key sections by learning objective:
(1) The Personal Factor - Consultant Attributes (45 minutes)
Introductions
Consulting landscape
Do I have what it takes
Introduction to the business plan template
(2) Identifying and Marketing to your Niche (1 hour) 
Clients, services and your competitive Edge
Marketing
(3) Business Skills and Day to Day Management (1 hour)
Finances
Organization and management
Business planning
Tracking your time
(4) Questions & Next Steps (15 minutes)
Participant questions
Wrap-up and planning next steps
Each section will begin with a short presentation to provide the basic principles. This will be followed by examples, insider tips, and anecdotes from the facilitator. Large group discussions will follow, encouraging broader feedback and shared wisdom. If time allows, attendees will have an opportunity for both individual reflection and small group exercises based on worksheets provided for each section. The participants will be provided with a business plan template that, when completed outside of the workshop, will serve as the basis for an independent consulting practice.


This workshop is aligned to AEA’s Competencies and Guiding Principles as follows:
Independent consulting workshops focus on both the professional practice and the planning and management domains. Through the niche and marketing sessions, we help evaluators focus on how to focus on what makes them distinct. The marketing, budgeting, fee and organization and management discussions will focus on developing professional independent consulting practices.

It is extremely important to understand that the Competence principle is extremely important to our workshop. There are far too many incompetent independent consultants, many of whom are not associated with AEA or aware of our professional approach to evaluation. Frankly, many do poor work and reflect poorly on our profession. Our workshop promotes competent independent evaluation consultants who are more likely to be successful in their practices if they follow our successful approach. The indirect effect is that through helping small consulting practices be more successful we will have more competent evaluators, associated with AEA, who are likely to grow their practices, and their capacity to serve a broader clientele.


Facilitation Experience:
Matt has been the AEA Independent Consulting Topical Interest Group (IC TIG) chair, has led 20+ sessions and workshops on independent consulting, and currently leads the weekly IC Topic Chat sessions. (To date he has facilitated more than 130 hours of conversations on independent consulting topics through the weekly chat.) He has led several AEA pre-conference workshops on independent consulting and his workshop has been accepted three times for the Summer Evaluation Institute. Since this session will be virtual, Laura will join Matt for this workshop. She regularly presents with Matt in person at the AEA pre-conference workshop. Laura and Matt have collectively presented on independent consulting TIG topics more than 20 times at the AEA conferences, submitted numerous TIG newsletter articles, contributed to the TIG AEA 365, and served AEA on multiple committees.


Date:
August 4th, 12:00 PM - 3:00 PM Eastern Time