Re: Pro bono vs "freebies"

My policy was always, no pro bono work ever, for any reason.

We had two stock answers at the ready. The first was that our client base was virtually all non-profit organizations. If we gave away our work for good causes, we'd have no work.

That's probably not true for you, so I offer my other stock answer to you: inviting them to observe that virtually nobody else that they dealt with - not electric companies, phone companies, grocery stores, banks, post office, gas stations, veterinarians, barbers, restaurants - was giving them freebies because they were a good cause. Most weren't even discounting.

This was an especially easy reply if the person making the pitch to us was a volunteer - hey Mr. Realtor/Banker/Hotelier, you ain't donating your WORK products, and I won't either.

There were times that we gave free professional advice, sometimes about very complicated problems that took a lot of time to deal with. We helped people write and place press releases. We helped them get speaking gigs with other community groups (chambers of commerce, rotary, etc.), where they often showed our videos as part of the presentation.

But video work itself? Never ever ever for free. Not shooting, editing, duplication, nothing. We got paid for work. Period.

We gave away lots of other things to causes we believed in. We gave them money, bought them equipment, brought in food for the staff, served on boards, made phone calls, stuffed envelopes, recruited others, hosted fundraisers, donated stuff to raffle...but even the stuff we donated for raffle was never our WORK.

We found that having them pay for our work gave them pride of ownership in the finished project, and validated their belief that their efforts were worth being funded.

It also helped them to remember to actually USE our work. :-)

And, working in a small town, it ensured that our commercial clients never saw us giving away our work. It helped them respect us as peers, because they weren't giving their work away, either.

Time, money, sweat, blood, love -- you can have all that and more for free.

Pay for my work.