Consulting Solutions

As an exceptional leader in the association world, Susan Sarfati's knowledge and expertise spans many areas. She has a powerful commitment to principles such as extraordinary customer service, building and sharing knowledge, and creating high performance organizations by creating exceptional volunteer and staff cultures, and more. These create the foundation for a rich array of consulting solutions that Susan can customize to meet the needs of any organization.

Some of these consulting solutions include:

Organizational Assessment/Audit

Conduct a comprehensive organizational assessment/audit of strategy and operations and provide findings, suggestions for improvements and for maximizing the potential of the organization.

Areas of review can include:

• Overview of the organization
• Mission, vision and objectives
• Governance -- board, committees, task forces
• Organizational structure and documents including strategic plan
• Programs, services and activities
• Staffing structure and competencies
• Financial resources, planning and reporting
• Membership development and retention
• Fundraising strategies and donor relations
• Communications, marketing, public relations, branding
• Public outreach
• Technology effectiveness
• Other areas as identified as appropriate based on organization needs

Surprise, Delight, and Challenge: Designing an Extraordinary Customer Service Focused Culture and Organization

Superior customer service will provide organizations the competitive edge in the 21^st century. It is a major key to success in every organization although it is not easy to deliver. Susan Sarfati built a strong reputation for excellent customer service in organizations she has led through a branding and operational philosophy of "Surprise, Delight and Challenge," which became a mantra that drove all member and customer programs and interactions. Susan will analyze your organization's customer service culture, suggest procedures and operations to apply the principles and provide expertise on how to implement principles and practices to create superior customer service.

Staff Transformation

Every organization needs a creative and committed staff team to thrive and succeed. Susan Sarfati is widely known and respected for her ability to hire, motivate, and retain many of the brightest and most capable professionals in the association management profession. Several have gone on to become association CEOs, others lead their own consulting companies, and many currently hold senior-level positions at ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership and at other organizations. Susan can evaluate your organization's philosophy, staff culture, teamwork, and other factors affecting the work environment and recommend ways to bring staff performance, teamwork and retention to new heights.

A Day of Learning with Susan Sarfati

What if your organization could spend an entire day picking the brain of one of the top association, foundation and nonprofit leaders in the profession? Someone who has worked her way up through the trenches, developing expertise in leadership, management, meetings and trade shows, customer service, lifelong learning, branding, marketing, and developing a high performance team yielding beyond excellent performance. Susan learned about leadership by being a leader, in addition to researching and studying leadership. She has developed expertise by learning from personal experience and from the vast network of professionals she has been privileged to work with over 30 years of a career starting as a staff specialist and rising to a CEO. Now you can hire Susan Sarfati for a full-day or multi-day retreat/workshop and come away with cutting edge ideas and implementation plans for improving and growing your organization.

International Study Missions

Successful organizations are looking to global markets for future growth opportunities. Visiting these markets, meeting the key players, and listening to their needs lays the groundwork for future success. Susan Sarfati has led study missions to China and India as well as consulted with and spoken at many globally focused congresses and events. She can plan, organize, and execute a study mission for your organization which includes planning the content, social events and collaborative opportunities in the country where the mission will be held.

Education and Meetings Assessment

Are the education, trade shows, and meetings programs at your organization positioned in the best way to serve member and stakeholder needs and surpass their expectations? Do they employ the latest adult learning approaches and include opportunities that are easily accessible and affordable? Find out the answers to these questions and more through an assessment of your education, exhibit and meetings programs, led by Susan Sarfati, founding CEO of The Center for Association Leadership and leader of GWSAE, ASAE & the Center's learning programs for many years.

Social Responsibility Initiative

You know your organization cares about the world and want to help make it a better place. You have examples to prove it. But there may not be a program in place to galvanize these efforts into a social responsibility movement that can demonstrate how your profession or industry is can do well by doing good and make a business case for social responsibility. Susan Sarfati, creator of the Global Summit on Social Responsibility and the social responsibility movement for ASAE & The Center, will help you design your own Social Responsibility plan which can include a Summit as a launching pad for an ongoing movement. Susan has completed a six-month global social responsibility project for three organizations in Amman, Jordan through USAID. As part of that project, she developed a 300-page social responsibility training manual which is considered a landmark accomplishment and can readily be shared with your organization and/or form a prototype of a document you can produce for your organization.