Freelance Accounting: How Pro Bono Work Adds Up

It may sound counter-intuitive that you can make money becoming a consultant by working for free, but sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction! This gem from our secrets of consulting vault is called pro bono work, and if applied correctly for your freelance career, it 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 caseFreelance Accounting: Pro Bono Adds Up study, and possibly 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. Plus, a blank resume, portfolio, or CV is the kiss of death in this economy – it makes you look useless and like you can’t find good things to do with your time. If you want to seem like you're a freelance success, doing pro bono consulting project work can help you keep a full historical accounting of what you’ve been up to.

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.

Generate Financial Freelance Success: Build Your Own Recovery

This is a build your own recovery. It isn’t actually jobless -- you’ve just got to create your own work. Often, struggling consultants tell me they are underemployed and cannot find new assignments. Yet, when I review their portfolio, it's obvious: they’ve been sitting around watching daytime television, and meanwhile their skills are getting increasingly stale.

Don’t let it happen to you!

Keep yourself busy, ensure your online presence (website or LinkedIn) shows the best possible evidence of your business skills, and be a consulting success story!

Have you done pro bono work? How did you use it to enhance your consulting business?

Any lessons learned?

Leave a comment and tell us about it!

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