Why Pro Bono Work is Essential
Sep 14, 2006If you do not do pro bono work as a business, you will not succeed as a business.
For freelancers to do pro bono work seems counterintuitive. We only get paid if we are on a billable project, so basic tenets of business means we should try to maximize the time we are billing while working.
I think this laser-like focus on billable hours is completely backwards, not just in freelancing, but in all forms of business.
Giving your time away to the right people (and not the wrong people) will help grow business, make the business better, and help keep a business focused on what is important.
Getting Started
If you’re a freelancer you probably don’t have bags of money lying around like large corporations to sponsor events around town. What do you have those is time, and when combined with your inherent talents and skills is something worth putting towards a worthy cause.
Many non-profits rely on volunteer efforts, and you’d be amazed at how little technical skills are volunteered. An individual with some IT skills can make an amazing difference at a non-profit, even if it seems like little easy things. Some ideas:
- Get their finances organized with Quicken.
- Get them their own hosting off their overpriced AOL account for email and a webpage.
- Clean the spyware off their computer and get it secured.
These are things that take no more than a few hours, but mean the world to a non-profit organization that can’t afford an IT staff.
The Benefits
When doing pro bono work most of the benefit is for the organization you’re helping, but there is some benefit for you, the professional, as well.
- You get a great reference to use to get future work
- You’ll gain some valuable professional contacts
- You’ll get to work in an environment where everybody is truly passionate about a cause
- You can contribute to something that is focused on something more than just profit and earnings statements
If you usually work with large corporations on a daily basis doing pro bono work for a small non-profit is probably the best thing you can do as individual to stay excited about your work and passionate about the things that got you in to your career in the first place.
Final Notes
Let me emphasize that while I am a huge proponent of pro bono work, I highly recommend only doing pro bono work with non-profit organizations that you have a vested interest in. Giving your time away to clients that you would normally charge for is a quick way to torpedo your business.