A fundraising consultancy helps startups and small companies raise money from investors, lenders or grant bodies. Work is project-based, rewards often depend on success, and staff need analysis, writing and relationship skills together.
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Share your requirementsA fundraising consultancy prepares companies to raise money: financial models, pitch decks, information memoranda, investor lists and meetings. The team has partners who hold the relationships, associates and analysts who build models and decks, a research person who maintains investor lists, and an admin and coordination desk. A mandate can last many months with little visible progress, and fees may combine a retainer with a success fee paid only if money is raised. That makes firm income uneven and pay for staff uncertain. Analysts work through nights before investor meetings. Founders change their minds on numbers and storylines. Strong associates are recruited by the investors and startups they meet. See also HR for professional services.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in fundraising consultants. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
A big fee arrives once or twice a year, and in between, staff pay and morale depend on retainers that do not cover costs.
Associates build models but do not meet investors, so they see no path to the work that carries the reward.
Founders change numbers close to an investor call, and analysts redo models overnight, again and again.
A months-long search with no result leaves the team idle or doubting, and nobody is sure how to treat the time.
Contacts and interests change, and an out-of-date list wastes the partners' meetings.
Each analyst builds in their own way, and errors are found by the investor, not the firm.
A founder offers a finance role, equity talk and a title, and the consultancy has no way to compete.
Staff see unpublished numbers and plans, yet terms on confidentiality and moving to a client or investor are thin.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Compensation, Payroll and Benefits; Career and Succession Management; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a fundraising consultants business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A written pool or bonus rule for the team on a closed deal, alongside a steady base.
A written pool or bonus rule for the team on a closed deal, alongside a steady base. See compensation benchmarking.
A staged plan in which associates attend investor meetings, then lead sections, then handle a mandate.
A staged plan in which associates attend investor meetings, then lead sections, then handle a mandate. The learning and development process sets it.
A freeze date for numbers, one change owner and rest time after the call, so overnight reworks fall.
A freeze date for numbers, one change owner and rest time after the call, so overnight reworks fall.
An owner for the list, a review date and a note on each contact's last conversation.
An owner for the list, a review date and a note on each contact's last conversation.
A common layout and a second check before a model leaves the firm, using the performance management process for feedback.
A common layout and a second check before a model leaves the firm, using the performance management process for feedback.
Duties on client data and on joining clients or investors, drawn up through the HR documentation process and checked by a qualified professional.
Duties on client data and on joining clients or investors, drawn up through the HR documentation process and checked by a qualified professional.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
A base and bonus design that survives uneven fee income.
A staged path from analyst to deal lead.
Feedback on models and decks that improves quality.
Confidentiality and non-solicit terms drafted clearly.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why associates and managers leave consulting, accounting, legal and advisory firms, and how to ask about progression, workload and partners at exit.
6 min readRead article
Simple variable pay structures for product and engineering teams: four options, why individual metrics backfire, a build plan and a one page outline to adapt.
6 min readRead article
A two-hour exercise that names the roles you could not fill quickly, who could cover them, and what readiness would actually require.
7 min readRead article
What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Agree a rule in advance, such as a pool split by role and contribution, and put it in writing. Surprises after a deal damage trust.
Create a staged path that brings them into meetings, then sections, then mandates. Without it, startups and investors will offer more.
Set a number freeze date before meetings, one owner for change requests and rest time after the call.
Use them for investor research, model templates and training. Plan the work so it is not a surprise.
They may help, but enforceability varies. Ask a qualified professional to draft terms that are fair and clear.
Pay across uneven fee income, associate growth, pre-meeting load and confidentiality are typical starting points. We begin by hearing how your last mandate ran. Scope, timing and fees are agreed in writing.
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