Peer Consults

2011 Peer Consult Scholarship Application Deadline Oct. 30

Consulting Services for Nature and Environmental Education Centers

ANCA offers professional expertise for addressing nature and environmental learning centers’ issues. Since 1992, more than 70 nature centers from Alaska to Florida have benefitted from an ANCA Consult.

With this unique service, a team of three to five seasoned nature center professionals, who have experience relevant to your situation, spend two days of intensive work at your center. They interview staff, meet with board members and stakeholders, inspect facilities, and engage in other activities important to your concerns. The Team then offers objective feedback and advice to you in an informal, dynamic, and respectful manner.

Each center faces unique issues. The host site works with the ANCA staff and Consult Team Leader to identify key questions for the Team to address. Past Consults dealt with a range of topics including:
   • Starting a nature center
   • Long-range and strategic planning preparation
   • Personnel and human resource issues
   • Organizational structure
   • Facility and land use planning
   • Green building
   • Capital campaign design
   • Board recruitment and training
   • Review or brainstorming of education programs, exhibits, or interpretive trails
   • Fundraising and fiscal management
   • Management strategies
   • Community outreach and strategies
   • Marketing and media relations

Organizations that host an ANCA Peer Consult receive the unique benefit of intense, focused input from nature center directors and senior staff from across the country. ANCA maintains a pool of more than 100 seasoned professionals from which your Consult Team will be selected.

Learn more about ANCA Peer Consults.

"We contacted the folks at ANCA and they pulled together some of the best people in this business on very short notice. The consulting team spent two full days in the park and provided a detailed written report within one month. The process was fun, the cost was reasonable, and the results are tangible - we are moving forward with a revised proposal based on the excellent advice we received from these experts. Thanks to ANCA and its volunteer consultants for providing a very valuable service to our profession!" 
                 --Jeff Brown, Director of Educational Operations, Yellowstone Institute

We are the nature center experts!
To discuss a Consult for your organization contact:
Ann Rilling, Development & Communications Director
(970) 375-7090 or

Download generic verbiage for a Consult grant application (MS Word doc).

Join an ANCA Peer Consult Team:
ANCA depends on the skills and talents of its members to fill Consult Teams. Please visit the Members Only section and take a moment to fill out and return the skills survey and we will add you to the pool of potential team members. The survey can be faxed to Jen Levy at (435) 752-3984.

---