Blog

A Time To Think Differently: Pro Bono Work Around The Holidays

The holiday season is a time of reflection. We, too, are looking back to some of the best consulting advice and content from over the years, to share with our readers. Happy
build-up to the holidays!

It may sound counter-intuitive that you can make money becoming a consultant by working for free, but sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction! Pro bono work, if applied correctly for your freelance career, can be a powerful business development approach.

Pro bono means “for the [public] good,” but can be good for you too, and may be one of the most underutilized consulting strategies.

Pro bono consulting or freelancing gives you an opportunity to grow your network, learn new skills, build social currency, project a brand of social responsibility and philanthropy, and build a portfolio. Successful completion means you can get testimonial quotes, publish a case study and maybe even issue press releases about the projects you’re doing for free. You may also be able to “test drive” a new skill that you aren’t yet comfortable charging for – no one wants to make a paid client a guinea pig.

This is a great thing to do during a recession (or jobless recovery, for that matter) if you aren’t utilizing all your available consulting or freelancing hours or if you've been laid off and are looking to start a consulting firm. It covers the sound of silence issuing from a blank resume, portfolio, or CV. If you want to seem like you're a freelance success, doing pro bono consulting project work can help you keep that resume building.

Is Pro Bono Work Right For You?

Ask yourself a few questions:

• Do you have more work than you have time to accept? 
• Do you have a stable of grateful, gushing clients willing to give you killer
  testimonials, referrals, and references?
• Do you have a strong page of public, signed testimonials?
• Is your portfolio a strong representation of your finest possible work?
• Are you getting frequent business referrals from happy clients?

If you’ve answered “no” to any of these questions, what are you waiting for?

Go get some pro bono projects. You’ll learn a lot, challenge yourself, keep your spirits up, and end up more marketable as a freelancer. It isn’t too hard to get a happy client when they’ve received your valuable talents for a price they could never afford.


How to Find and Select a Pro Bono Client

1. Find an organization that could use your special skills, preferably an organization doing some kind of work that benefits the public. Examples are schools, libraries, hospitals and clinics, non-profit organizations, or civic service clubs.
2. Propose a carefully limited project. Don’t start off volunteering your work on an ongoing basis, but rather offer to perform a project specifically limited in scope. Examples will depend on what your consulting or freelance talent is, but might be a one-time upgrade of their email newsletter template, redesigning a logo, importing their fundraising contacts into a more usable database format, planning an event, delivering an IT training to their staff, helping get their books in order, renegotiate a major purchasing relationship that is hurting their finances, or some other project.
3. Depending on your relationship with the client, you might consider contracting up front and let them know you’ll be looking for a testimonial, case study, or portfolio piece from the arrangement. Get the permissions you’ll need to list them as a client on your website or portfolio.
4. Consider binding the client to an NDA agreement so that the pro bono nature of the assignment is not publicly disclosed. This can prevent the scenario of other groups wanting free time from you.
5. As the project comes to a close, request feedback and testimonials from them, or write up a case study that they can easily approve. Take on the “hard work” of coming up with the content so they can just sign off or make minor changes.  Make it easy, and don’t make them think too hard!
   
   

Independent Consulting Caveats When Going Pro Bono

There are some pitfalls with pro bono work. The first is not to let your work become undervalued. The second is not to let a one-time volunteer project fall into “scope creep” and become an ongoing drain that prevents you from pursuing paid assignments and consulting contracts.

 

This post was originally authored by Liz Greene. (@liz_greene).