No one wants a public relations nightmare. Eleanor Miller shares her tips on how to find the right PR consultant for your charity

Deciding to put the management of your organisation’s public image into the hands of others is an important step and not one to be taken lightly. Through every marketing channel, your carefully honed fundraising messages must shine through and stand out from the rest. With larger organisations spending big budgets on high-profile advertising campaigns, smaller organisations often fear that cost prohibitions will result in their messages will be lost, but with the right PR agency on board, this doesn't have to be the case.

Build a brief

The first step to making sure your organisation appoints the right PR consultancy is the preparation of a brief. Using your organisation’s overarching strategy, narrow down your communication objectives. Be clear about your organisation’s key messages and identify the audiences they need to be communicated to. Give as much detail as possible about key events or calendar dates, particularly if you envisage using PR to help to publicise them.

Build a budget

If you have a PR budget, include it in the brief. Don’t forget that the consultancy will have to pay VAT – this will prevent proposals coming back with unrealistic ideas which cannot be delivered. It’s also important to include key performance indicators (KPIs) as this will help everyone understand what is expected of the PR programme. Be clear about how and when the consultancy will be evaluated on its work – will it be every month, every six months or annually? It’s essential to include media evaluation as this may be an important tool for securing your future marketing budget.

Research the roster

Without access to a well-researched roster of PR agencies, organisations can find themselves struggling to identify which consultancies would be best suited to their particular brief.
There are services available, through the Public Relations Consultant Association (PRCA) or independent pitch consultants such as Hickson Communications, who can bring clarity to the table but there are also some golden rules:

• Has the agency got the right credentials to work within the voluntary sector but also does it understand how to communicate to your different audiences? 
• If you have a hard-to-reach, niche audience be prepared to pair up the PR agency you choose with a specialist in that field.
• Look closely at any case studies or testimonials that the agency is prepared to share – does the type of work they’ve done have synergy with your organisation?
• Consider whether an agency accredited or affiliated to bodies such as the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) or National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) is likely to deliver best practice over one which isn’t.
• If your organisation is small to medium, consider whether a similar size consultancy will have greater affinity with you and may well offer better value for money. It’s also possible that by choosing a smaller-sized consultancy your organisation will have access to more senior individuals who are closer to the ground.

Prepare the pitch

Prior to the presentations it’s advisable to offer a Q&A session for each agency. This is mutually beneficial and can be an indicator as to whether an agency is going completely off track and needs to be steered back on course!

Depending on how many agencies you are inviting in to present, make sure that the time slots aren’t back-to-back, as your attention is likely to wane. Spread them over two days if necessary.
Be prepared with a checklist of criteria that you can score the consultancy’s proposal against, but don’t forget that good chemistry between the teams is also an important indicator for success.

Choose carefully

Choosing which agency is going to do the best job of representing your organisation in a PR capacity is not always easy, and it’s likely that each presentation will have strengths and weaknesses which makes the job harder still. However by starting the process with a carefully thought-out brief and by applying some tried and tested selection criteria there is a greater chance that the consultancy you choose to appoint will deliver a sound PR programme which gets your organisation’s fundraising messages on the media radar.

Eleanor Miller is director of Bread and Butter PR and a consultant to Third Sector PR

This article first appeared in The Fundraiser magazine, Issue 17, May 2012