By Erin Dalpini

Whether early on in your writing career or later down the line, if you’re good at what you do and people begin to notice, it’s likely the time will come when you’ll be faced with this dilemma: to pro bono or not to pro bono?

That is the question.

Perhaps the noble ring of a pro bono gig sounds enticing or maybe you’d rather jump off a cliff than sign on for that “sea of troubles.” (Anyone catch that Hamlet reference?) Here’s a handy rundown of things to keep in mind if you ever encounter a pro bono request . . .

First, let’s be sure we have the definition of pro bono squared away: a Latin phrase, pro bono means “for the good” and is commonly used to describe work done for no payment for the good of the public. Although lawyers are well known for their pro bono services, it’s plausible any professional can provide pro bono services to those who simply cannot afford them. An example of freelance pro bono work might be writing up a monthly email newsletter for the cash-strapped nonprofit animal shelter in your neighborhood.

Freelance pro bono writing, however, is quite a hot topic. Why? Well, most speculate that’s because in the professional realm, a good amount of freelance writers are still paid pretty poorly for their services, therefore many writers refuse to do it on principle.

So why do pro bono writing at all? A few compelling reasons . . .

* It’s a great way to get your name out there. When you’re just starting out or returning to work, freelance pro bono writing—as long as it’s for a credible source—can be a nice addition to your portfolio.

*It might help you make connections. Assuming your client was impressed, your good work for this particular organization could lead to another paying project, as word of mouth travels fast.

*If the pro bono assignment is for something you believe in or an organization or individual you care for very much, it can be intrinsically rewarding to share your talents for the good of the public. Perhaps the subject matter is one that you’re passionate about—that’s a great reason to sign on as well. To quote Sheryl Crow, “If it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad . . .”

And now the counterarguments . . .

*Time = Money. You’re giving up other paying gigs to do this one. ’Nuff said.

*Be wary of the size and scope of the project. If expectations aren’t managed on both sides of the project, you could end up doing more work than you originally planned. At what point does this pro bono job become too labor intensive? Communication is key.

*Some writers say that professionals should never give away their work for free, especially in a business arena that doesn’t always give credit where credit is due. Are you undermining your worth in taking this project? Only you can answer that.

Bottom line: Only sign up for a pro bono freelance project when you know full well what you’re getting yourself into, and ultimately, what you’ll be getting out of it. If you feel confident that the time and energies you’ll be committing to this project have some added value, go for it. If you’re feeling hesitant or obligated to help, that’s not a good sign—just say, “Sorry, I can’t.”

Like this advice? Want to hear more? Visit www.freelance-zone.com where you can find tons of information on how to “work smarter, not harder”.

Due to popular demand, the organizers of Freelance Camp San Francisco 2010 have created a new sub-brand, Freelance Camp PRO. This “unconference” will target attendees who have been running a freelance business full time for a year or more. The event will be smaller (+/- 100), topics more advanced, and participation is expected to be at a higher level than the past camps.

The morning will kick off with coffee and pastries, and a brainstorm of desired topics. Participants with something to contribute or a specific topic idea generate the breakout sessions which are then scheduled throughout the rest of the day. Freelance Camp PRO will culminate with an after party to further the networking and knowledge exchange in a casual, social setting.

Throughout the event, Freelance Camp PRO will share live tweets with the #freelancecamp hashtag and updates to the Wiki page, so the fun and learning can be followed outside of the space!

OUR SPONSORS
We have been blessed with a phenomenal outpouring of sponsorship offers this year so we wanted to give a quick shout out to some pretty special groups that are nurturing this year’s event!

24 Seven

Bottom Line Law Group

Colliers International

Cosmic Design Company

Elance

MBO Partners

Mozilla

NextSpace Coworking San Francisco

Outright

PariSoma Innovation Loft

Pennbrook I CAIB Insurance Services

Popchips

Shane & Peter, Inc.

Speck

Freelancer Forum interviewed Rebecca Brian, Shane Pearlman, and Jeremy Neuner about Freelance Camp PRO and the movement that is sweeping the nation.

A two day conference called The Future of Freelancing: Redefining Journalism, Reinventing Yourself, produced by the John S. Knight Fellowships program will be held at Stanford on June 18-19.  The  conference is designed to help experienced journalists explore their evolving careers and stay inspired to do their best work.

Editors from the New Yorker, the Washington Post, Esquire, Mother Jones, AOL, the Bay Area News Project and many other traditional and online outlets will talk about their publications, freelance opportunities and the evolution of the craft. The first 40 writers to register will have the chance to meet one-on-one with an editor.

Keynote speaker David Granger will discuss the future of magazines, the media and what it means for writers.

Other speakers include:

• Daniel Zalewski, features editor, The New Yorker
• Sydney Trent, editor, Washington Post
• Mark Robinson, senior editor, Wired
• Clara Jeffery, editor, Mother Jones
• Jonathan Weber, editor-in-chief, Bay Area News Project
• Marcia Parker, West Coast Director, AOL’s Patch.com

The first 40 writers to register will qualify for a one-on-one meeting with an editor, assigned on a first-come, first-serve basis. Registration opens April 9 for ASJA members, SPJ Northern California members, and current or former Knight fellows; April 16 for the general public.

The Future of Freelancing conference is sponsored by the John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists, the American Society for Journalists and Authors (ASJA), ASJA Northern California, and The Society for Professional Journalists Northern California Chapter.

For more information, visit http://freelance.stanford.edu/ or e-mail freelance@lists.stanford.edu.

Registration Opens April 9 for Members of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, or the Society for Professional Journalists; April 16, registration will open for other experienced journalists.

From chaos and confusion to peace and sanity

This Brown Bag Lunch focused on decision making and was made possible by Lydia Snider, a certified performance and family coach based out of Santa Cruz.  She began by quoting someone who once said “the only difference between regular and successful people is making decisions, and how fast you act upon it.”   She stressed that the decisions that you’ve made and haven’t acted on, may be sucking your energy and stressing you out.  Thus, we need to close the gaps and move toward making those decisions.

The best way to do anything is to act upon it, so Lydia assigned us an in-class exercise.  She put four columns on the board, encouraging us to begin with the first and third columns.  In the first column, the exercise consisted of listing results in your life that you’re happy with; whereas in the third column, you would write down those results with which you are unhappy.  Later, in the second and fourth columns we were to write the choices we made.  The second column was to be filled with the choices that made you happy, while the fourth would contain those that made you unhappy.

We paired up and discussed the choices that made us unhappy.  Listening definitely made me want to help someone figure out how to come up with a good solution, whereas talking about a wrong decision, helped my teammate feel better.

If you’re always busy and running from one project to the next, you might have to make decisions on the fly in order to prioritize, but what about the long term?  What decisions are you delaying now that may help you move closer to your end goal?

As military commanders tell their troops, “no battle plan ever survives first contact.” Instead of asking “what’s wrong with me?”  Start looking for choices.  Don’t sit in the victim frame, i.e.: “I can’t do it because”, “I wish,” “I want,” “I need,” etc.  Starting to look for solutions, i.e.:  “I will, I can.”  Don’t just try, DO; trying is failing with honor.

Quick Coaching tips:

• Every moment is a choice; every choice is moving you closer to or further away from what you want.
• Readjust at every moment; every moment is an opportunity for you to make a different choice
• There is no such thing as failure, there are only results.
• There’s no wrong decision, there’s only A decision.

Lydia Snider typically works with entrepreneurial parents who are struggling with balancing growing their home life with growing their business.  After working with her, parents tend to move from overwhelm and chaos to feeling like their home is a sanctuary.  Since a business is very much like a family, her strategies are also very effective for entrepreneurs who are struggling with working effectively with partners and clients.  Visit her site to learn more or take one of the workshops.

This brown bag lunch featured Noel Murphy, a professional speaker and facilitator.

We participated in a session of the Speaker’s Gym which was designed to help people develop their public speaking skills.

Noel broke down the speech into three main parts:

1.Ground (Disconnecting from your mental distractions while simultaneously establishing a connection with the audience)

2.Direction (Connecting the ground to agenda)

3. Agenda (Purpose of the speech)

In this session, he focused on grounding, when a speaker identifies something sacred and important to them as a basis to built a connection with the audience personally.  This also prepares the audience to understand the reasons behind the agenda.  A simple example would be the speaker starts their speech talking about how he or she feels that poverty is a horrible experience that no one deserves or should suffer through.  This prevents the speaker from thoughts such as: does the audience like me?  how much time do I have left?  How should I explain my agenda?  Thus, grounding allows the audience  to understand and empathize with the speaker.

After his speech, we all practiced speaking, one at time, in front of the other attendees.  Once everyone went through their speech, we all expressed having learned something about one another, which showed us how powerful the grounding method was in public speaking.

Here’s are additional points to keep in mind when speaking in public:

Do’s

-Practice and get as much feedback as possible in order to improve each time

-Be transparent about your agenda and make it simple to understand, don’t try to introduce your agenda with a long winded explanation

-Talk about yourself and your beliefs by using I, this makes your points and beliefs stronger and you audience will want to follow where your path

Don’ts

-Don’t be distracting by using a lot of hand gestures

-Don’t make your speech sound too scripted and rigid

-Don’t use tee-offs (i.e.: when the speaker becomes less compelling by going off on tangents trying to explain themselves or takes too long to make a point)

-Don’t try to hide your agenda

-Don’t think about trying to make the audience like you

More information about Speaker’s Gym:  http://thespeakersgym.net/

Noel’s Bio: http://noelmurphyseminars.com/about-noel.html

How to keep disputes with customers, suppliers, and employees from sidetracking your business

This brown bag brought Allan and Jim Kass from the Santa Cruz Mediation Group to NextSpace to talk about how to solve client or partner relationships that may get in the way of running your business.

Is a current issue with a customer or supplier worrying you?  Have you communicated the problem? What was their response? If the response is negative, instead of suing your client or business partner, you may want to take your case to a mediator.

Mediators step in to help save your client/customer or business partner relationships so that you can continue to run your business successfully. What possible issues could come in the way of these valuable and profitable relationships? A few examples include: billing or invoice disagreements, unclear/vague contracts, performance deficiencies, and miscommunication.

Allan and Jim Kass explain the difference between arbitration and mediation.  A binding arbitration may require that you enter a binding agreement, which you may have been obligated to agree with as a result of choosing an arbitrator at a time when neither you nor your client were able to come up with a decision.  In addition, you may not have a right to appeal the contract.  It may be possible, according to the outcome, that a relationship with a client, employee, or partner would not survive.  Finally, the  cost of the ordeal is going to take a while to recover from.

An alternate dispute resolution method is mediation.  As opposed to arbitration, costs are reduced, the final agreement may be more beneficial, and your mediator wasn’t there to impose or obligate you to agree to their decision.  Mediators set up a framework for you and your business partner, client, or supplier, to come up with a solution to which you both agreed.  In the end, both parties split the cost of the mediation services half way, and both parties walk out with the feeling that each received a fair deal.

Allan and Jim Kass stress the importance of settling a dispute early on rather than later; when you and your client may already be feeling animosity toward each other.  Solving disputes early may result in the least amount of staff time (if the issue requires your staff serve as witness), and may also contain negative PR.

Dear Coalition Opposing Independent Contractor Withholding:

You made a difference! Thank you!

We are pleased to report the Legislature temporarily shelved the independent contractor withholding proposal, and it is no longer part of the current Senate budget package. We believe this is due in large part to the efforts of this coalition! The budget, however, will continue to be discussed this summer, and independent contractor withholding can be revived as a proposal and remains a threat. This means we must remain vigilant, and our work is not finished. 

Next Steps:

1.    Please provide a copy of your letter: CalChamber is compiling a record of all of the letters that were sent by coalition members to a legislator. If you wrote to your Assembly member and/or Senator, please email us a copy of the letter at savejobs@calchamber.com or fax us a copy at 916-325-1272.

2.      Please let us know if you made a phone call: We are also keeping track of phone calls that were made on behalf of a business. If you made a phone call, please let us know to whom, as well as your company’s city, state and zip code. This will help us to track what districts had phone activity.

3. Stay tuned: We will keep you apprised of further developments with this proposal and let you know when further action is needed. Attached is the latest version of the coalition handout and coalition list. We are now have over 1000 coalition members and growing!! If you requested your business to be added and we inadvertently left you off, please let us know. Best regards, Kyla

Kyla Christoffersen
Policy Advocate
Issue Areas: Taxation, Labor and Employment
California Chamber of Commerce
1215 K Street, Suite 1400
Sacramento, CA 95814

Call to Action: Proposal makes businesses tax collectors and forces small biz to make interest-free loans to state.

California continues to have a severe budget crisis – $20 billion in the hole. Unfortunately, one of the solutions being proposed in Sacramento is yet another budget gimmick – an onerous 3% independent contractor withholding mandate on businesses and public agencies.

Any business/agency hiring an independent contractor (anyone who receives a 1099-MISC) will have to reduce every payment by 3%, and is responsible for remitting that money to the Franchise Tax Board, the state tax collection agency.

· Almost all companies, agencies and non-profits of any kind will have to withhold.

· Almost anyone who receives a 1099-MISC will be withheld upon, including builders, plumbers, real estate agents, attorneys and health care providers.

Under This Proposal:

· The 3% will be withheld even if the business owes no income taxes for the year due to losses/slim profit margins.

· The state gets to use the money-interest free until tax return time the next year.

· Money is taken out of the pockets of businesses that is needed to keep business afloat, make payroll and pay bills.

· Implementation will be extremely costly and complex for businesses and state and local government agencies.

· The mandate is ongoing and permanent for businesses/agencies.

All for a one-time money grab that is merely an acceleration/borrowing that generates very few new revenues for the state!

Call to Action

1. Add your business’s name to the growing coalition against this proposal! To be added, simply e-mail laurie.lively@calchamber.com. Your business’s name will be added to the coalition fact sheet.

The Opportunity

We’re looking for a talented Wordpress developer with extensive plugin experience to join our crew on a handful of upcoming projects. This is a freelance position – we’re game for people located anywhere in North America.

Are you clued into the latest wordpress happenings and developments? Have a hankering to extend Wordpress in new directions? We’re currently working on high-profile Wordpress implementations that range between conventional to seriously bleeding edge. We will want to see plugin code examples – public plugins are ideal. We want people that are able to develop code that can withstand high profile sites and intense loads. You should be comfortable working as part of a team – your code will have to integrate into an existing architecture. If the tightly optimized code get’s you excited – you’re probably a good fit.

The Company

Shane & Peter Inc. is a small, rapidly growing software & design company located in Santa Cruz, California. At S&P, we develop custom solutions for some of the world’s largest companies, government institutions and smaller growing organizations. We pride ourselves on our ability to bridge people and technology and to bring the passion and dedication of an entrepreneur to every project.

Team Requirements

We love working with each other because we have built a culture that suits us well. We work exclusively with freelancers and coordinate their talents for large projects. To be on our team, you must be:

• Helpful: Always looking for ways that you can help others.
• Happy : Where there is a will, there is a way. Having a positive disposition allows us to achieve great things and to support each other.
• Curious : It is essential that you have a passion for learning. Technology changes daily, and life has a way of constantly raising the bar.
• Accountable: Our clients expect us to get the right thing done on budget and on time. Communicating expectations and meeting them is the cornerstone of success.

Location

Work from anywhere in the US or Canada.

Responsibilities

• Architect and document plugin solutions using best practices
• Integrate code into existing plugin architecture
• Be apart of QA Team and optimize other team members code
• Passion for Detail and Standards
• Full Time Freelancers Only
• SVN Experience

Personal Competencies

• Strong communication and/or experience working as part of a remote team
• Self-motivated, detail-oriented, strong organizational skills, with a methodical approach to all tasks
• Ability to prioritize own workload and work to exacting deadlines
• Ability to maintain strict confidentiality
• Desire to constantly learn about the industry
• Fluent English speaker

Required Knowledge and Experience

• Wordpress structure, themes, and plugins
• PHP
• Javascript
• Basic LAMPS
• SVN
• Poficiency at local environment development

Additional Experience a Plus

• Examples of plugins that you’ve released to the open source community
• Advanced LAMPS skills
• Advanced Wordpress debug skills

Compensation

Pay range is between $40-60 per hour commensurate with background, qualifications and experience. This is a one time contract position, though we are always seeking long standing relationships with kick-ass people.

How to Apply

Fill out our simple application form and paste a text version of your resume / portfolio into the Why We Will Love You field. Please include and identify your 3 favorite Wordpress endeavors and your desired pay rate. http://blog.shaneandpeter.com/join-our-team/