Powerful Pairs: Pro Bono Consulting for Small Businesses

What You Need to Know

• TAP volunteer consultants show up prepared, listen closely, and make sure clients leave every session with something actionable.

• The three consultant pairs featured here reflect TAP’s dual mission: helping under-resourced small business owners access experienced, vetted professionals at no cost, while giving exceptional volunteers a meaningful way to apply the expertise they have built throughout their careers. 

• Whether the focus is financial coaching, business planning, or loan readiness, the common thread is the same: meet the client where they are.

When two consultants work together well, the impact on a small business owner can be transformative. The Acceleration Project (TAP) is a nonprofit that pairs under-resourced small business owners with skilled volunteer consultants for free, customized coaching to help them strengthen their businesses, create jobs, and build wealth in their communities.

TAP's consultant network includes 200+ vetted, trained, and active volunteers from 22 states and 2 countries, fluent in 25 languages, and specialists in marketing, finance, strategy, and operations. Sixty-nine percent work full or part-time roles and thirty-eight percent have been small business owners themselves. Every client is individually paired with the right consultants by a TAP team member through a thoughtful, human-led staffing process. We talked with three pairs of consultants about how they actually work together and what makes their approach stick.

Making Financial Coaching Click: Kelly and Samantha

Kelly Hodulik (Rye, NY) and Samantha Garbus (Richmond, VA) are both finance professionals who have volunteered with TAP across workshops and 1:1 sessions covering loan readiness, cash flow management, and financial fundamentals for small business owners. Together, they have logged more than 70 combined hours on shared projects, including the EDGE Program, Main Street Launch, and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.

Their approach starts with preparation. They hold brief Zoom calls before each workshop to divide the material and make sure the presentation flows. Kelly tends to anchor explanations in real-world examples and plain-language definitions, while Samantha brings energy and color to life concepts for audiences who may not have a finance background.

Why do business owners shy away from financial topics, and how do these workshops help?

TAP's financial webinars are free working sessions designed to help business owners prepare for funding. Kelly and Samantha aim to make the content approachable without sacrificing depth, and their styles complement each other naturally.

— Samantha Garbus, TAP Volunteer Consultant

For Kelly, the reward of the work is as much personal as professional. The small business owners she meets through TAP have changed how she thinks about entrepreneurship altogether.

— Kelly Hodulik, TAP Volunteer Consultant

Building Momentum Through Trusted Partnerships: Meg and May

Meg Langan (New York, NY) and May Lee (Scarsdale, NY) bring a different kind of synergy to their consulting work: speed, communication, and an instinct for reading the room. They operate as true partners, checking in before and after every client session, clearly dividing ownership of next steps, and adapting their approach based on how each business owner shows up on any given day.

What does it actually mean to meet a client where they are?

For Meg and May, it means resisting the urge to overwhelm a client with a perfectly structured roadmap if what they need first is to be heard. They take the first meeting to understand the business and the person behind it before offering direction.

— May Lee and Meg Langan, TAP Volunteer Consultants

May points to trust as the foundation of the whole approach. A client who feels judged or inadequate will not open up, and a consultant who cannot read the room will not be effective. That kind of attunement is something Meg and May have built into how they work together.

— May Lee, TAP Volunteer Consultant

Meg brings the same seriousness of purpose to her volunteer work that she would bring to any professional engagement. She describes approaching her TAP work as a job, and that commitment shows in how reliably she follows through.

May puts it plainly: "Meg does what she says she's going to do. I don't have to worry about having a backup plan."

Turning Experience into Practical Support: Lucy and Mike

Lucy Perkins (Arlington, VA) and Mike Wolfert (Croton-on-Hudson, NY) are both finance-first thinkers who are candid about preferring numbers to marketing plans. What they have discovered is that a strong financial foundation is often exactly what an under-resourced small business needs most, and that their complementary strengths make even complex engagements feel manageable.

Mike built a rock climbing business from a single location to six gyms across New York and Philadelphia before selling it to private equity in 2023. Lucy brings a nonprofit background and a talent for organizing complexity into clear, actionable steps. Together, they have worked with clients across very different industries, including Go Painting, a residential and commercial painting business on the Connecticut shoreline, and KADOO, a corporate gifting and gallery business in New York City.

How do you build a financial tool that a small business owner will actually use?

With Go Painting, the answer was straightforward: find the most urgent, concrete problem and solve it with something the owner could use immediately. The owner had a full roster of clients but was not pricing jobs profitably. Lucy developed a pricing calculator that let him enter square footage and project costs and instantly see the right price and expected margin. He started using it before the engagement even wrapped.

— Mike Wolfert, TAP Volunteer Consultant

The KADOO engagement required a different kind of support. The owner was deeply invested in her business, working hard, and ready to take it to the next level. Lucy and Mike worked with her on COGS tracking, cash versus accrual income statements, and building the operational discipline to scale sustainably. Mike focused on identifying the strategic levers that would help the business win, while Lucy translated that vision into spreadsheets, lists, and clear next steps.

— Mike Wolfert, TAP Volunteer Consultant

What travels across very different businesses?

Listening first. Lucy and Mike both describe starting every engagement with a genuine effort to understand the client before offering solutions. They bring in additional TAP consultants when a client needs expertise outside their core strengths, and they follow every session with a shared debrief and a clear punch list.

The through line across all three pairs is the same: small business owners do not need consultants who show up with a one-size-fits-all plan. They need partners who show up prepared, listen closely, and leave them with something they can use. That is what TAP's consulting model is designed to do.

TAP's Dual Mission: Empowering Small Businesses and Talent

The three pairs profiled here represent something larger than any single engagement. TAP's volunteer consultant model is central to how the organization operates and serves two purposes at once. For small business owners, it means access to experienced, vetted professionals who bring real-world expertise at no cost. For consultants, it means a meaningful way to apply the skills they have spent careers building, stay sharp, and give back to communities that too often go without this kind of support.

As Mike Wolfert put it, he and Lucy share a strong desire to pay their success forward. That sentiment echoes across every pair. Kelly Hodulik says she gets just as much as she gives. Samantha Garbus found renewed purpose in her first TAP webinar. Meg Langan treats every engagement with the seriousness of a full-time job. May Lee describes each new client as a reason the work never gets old.

TAP's personalized staffing process is designed to pair consultants and clients with intention and care. With consultants fluent in 25 languages, representing 22 states and 2 countries, and with 38% having owned businesses themselves, the network reflects the diversity and depth that under-resourced small business owners deserve.

Join Our Network: Become a TAP Consultant

TAP is always looking for experienced professionals to join its volunteer consultant network. If you have expertise in finance, marketing, strategy, or operations and want to put it to work for under-resourced small business owners, learn more and apply here.