MINELRES: Human Rights Tool new service: Human Rights Consulting

[email protected] [email protected]
Sat Mar 29 09:50:55 2008 

Original sender: Human Rights Tools <[email protected]>


Dear readers, 

We are launching our new consulting service, called Human Rights
Consulting.

We invite you to have a look at the profiles of our consultants.
Collectively, they offer a wide range of confirmed expertise in many
areas of human rights, and can work in a range of languages, including
English, French, Spanish, Russian and Chinese:
http://www.humanrightstools.org/consulting.htm

We decided to offer this new service after having a look at existing
consulting firms targeting the nonprofit sector. We found that many of
them have one or more of the following weaknesses:

- They are often too large to offer very good quality control (when you
have a 300-person consultant database, how can you be sure who is really
good?) or too small to offer sufficient diversity of expertise
(typically a couple of friends who open a micro-firm).

- Fees at larger firms are often high because of expensive overhead -
sometimes the consulting firm gets more than the consultant who does all
the work.

- Larger firms put up all sorts of barriers to stop clients from
interacting with the consultant directly until the deal is signed - a
model based on mistrust.

- Learning and knowledge generated by a consultancy is not
systematically shared with the wider the human rights community (there
are some remarkable exceptions).

So, we decided to do things differently. Our model is based on trust,
quality, wide scope, fair costs, and sharing of knowledge: 

- Quality guaranteed: we know our consultants well. All have strong
experience in their areas of competence, and a proven ability to work as
consultants and trainers.

- Wide range of expertise: our group is large enough to cover most areas
of human rights and most types of human rights work. 

- Easy to access: its really quick and easy to access our consultants,
individually or collectively. No complex barriers, no up-front fees, no
registration. Simply email them!

- Competitive fees: our services are very reasonably priced, because we
have very little overhead. You pay for expert, and not the intermediary!

- Exchange: the Human Rights Tools website + newsletter is the ideal
platform to share knowledge generated from consulting work, and
accelerate collective learning.

Of the points above, quality is the most important to us. From working
with consultants ourselves, we know first-hand that making the wrong
choice of consultant can be a costly mistake: not only are the fees
wasted, but also the expenses, time and energy spent by the members of
your team who have to take the consultant around. We are doing what we
can tomake sure that this does not happen at Human Rights Tools - we
know all our consultants personally and have a lot of respect for their
work. 

Human Rights Tools will receive 10% percent of the first contract
between a client and a consultant, and 5% of the second contract. That's
all. This will be used to fund the development of Human Rights Tools as
a learning platform.

How does it work? It could not be more simple:
1. Clients browse the online profiles of the consultants.
2. Clients can email their chosen consultants directly, or email
[email protected] to ask us to help identify the right
consultant.
3. Client and consultants agree on terms of reference and fees.

Once the project is completed, and with the consent of the client, Human
Rights Tools will publish a concise case-summary, in order to share the
learning with the wider human rights community. So that others can
benefit from the experience!

Visit this web-page to get started:
http://www.humanrightstools.org/consulting.htm

VERY IMPORTANT: If you do not find the expertise you are looking for, or
would like advice, then just write to us at
[email protected]. We have an extensive network and we
should be able to find
exactly what you need. 

So, from now on, please make sure you you send a copy of all human
rights-related TORs to us at [email protected].

We hope you will find this new service useful! As usual, we welcome all
feedback and comments, just reply to this email.

Best regards, and good luck in your efforts to promote and defend human
rights,

Daniel D'Esposito
Editor, Human Rights Tools
[email protected]
http://www.humanrightstools.org


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