Talk about Deal

I wanted to share something with the Woork Up community about doing pro bono work (as you probably know: “Pro Bono is a phrase derived from Latin meaning for the public good. The term is generally used to describe professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment as a public service” – from Wikipedia).

Over the past 24 months, our firm has accepted 3 large pro bono assignments. These assignments were non-profit associations that had been hit hard in the recession. Their budgets were at zero for design, marketing or advertising, yet they still had ambitions, dreams and hopes of continuing with their work as non-profits. These difficult times proved especially hard for them in the realm of digital media because they needed complicated websites that managed their members, had good SEO parameters, managed calendars of events and usually a member and vendor directory of some sort and so on.

To a web firm, these can be grueling and time-consuming when you have paying customers of your own that you must tend to.

Our firm decided to take on 3 of these types of assignments in the last 2 years and we are very glad we did.

For one, the experience gives us more practice to do what we do. It also gives us a sense of pride helping organizations who do good deeds, but can’t afford big agency pricing. And lastly, it brings in a ton of business if done right!

Because the non-profit is so thankful to you for what you’ve done, they are very willing to share you name, send out newsletters, put your banner on their site, offer incentives and push your brand to their many members.

In 2009 alone, our small firm benefited from pro bono work to the tune of about $108,000. The previous year, it was in the realm of about $200,000.

We estimated that the pro bono work, if billed out accordingly, would have cost the non-profits roughly about $60K total ($20K a piece) for all 3 associations. That makes our pro bono work a net gain of about $238,000 over 24 months.

So if you are looking for a way to break into a whole slew of businesses, start contacting non-profit associations who may be suffering right now. The work will be hard up front, but the payoff down the road can be huge.

And even if the payoff isn’t huge, if the non-profit is something you believe in, then you did a good deed!