Blog
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Will Work for Free Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Caleb Ludwick is a local writer, though that introduction doesn’t do his diverse body of work justice. Here, he tells us about the benefits of working pro bono, for ourselves and for the community.
WILL WORK FOR FREE
How unpaid work for good causes benefits me, you, and all of usNearly a decade ago, my wife and I were faced with the difficult choice of choosing where we would call home. There is something brazen about the act of choosing your hometown. Many other people have done it before us, and since. You know them – the entrepreneur, the arts lover, the rock climber.
But what would make a culinary school graduate and an English major choose Chattanooga? At the time, I was in graduate school north of London; she had recently completed a Cordon Bleu course and, even more recently, given birth to our first child. The date was September 12, 2001, and the Embassy said our daughter was officially a resident of nowhere, and we should move home right away. But where was home? Nashville, my birthplace? St. Louis, where we had already completed one Master’s degree? Asheville, Chicago – any of a number of cities we love?
In the end, we threw all of our eggs in the “love” basket and chose Chattanooga, the city we love most of all – even though Chattanooga held few good prospects for a cook and a writer. Within weeks after moving here, she started baking wedding cakes (talented lady). But I had a harder time finding work, and took a temp job typing dictation at a law firm.
A year later, the firm made me statewide Marketing Director. But my days were spent writing for law seminars and attorney biographies – a rather limited scope of work. So I went to local corporations and design agencies, offering to work for cheap so long as I could use the projects in my portfolio. They all turned me down. So I started going, instead, to business start-ups and nonprofits that I thought were cool: Niedlov’s, Girl’s Inc., Zümfoot, Chattanooga Market, and others. Since they didn’t have much money, I offered to do it for free.
So it was that I became freelance and accidentally savvy, in one swoop. I had unconsciously stumbled onto the virtues of a portfolio – and how to build one with or without a resume.
I wrote free ads, marketing copy, websites, press releases, white papers, brochures and more, then took what I’d done and cobbled it into a marketable portfolio. A decade later, my writing company is so busy that we turn work down every month, and more than half of our billable hours are with clients right here in Chattanooga.
And it’s free work that got us here.
INTERNS, RETIREES AND HACKS, OH MY
Unpaid work is not only for interns and retirees. Think about a blog. You don’t write it to get rich – unless you’re delusional (and then you might, at least, get a book deal). Or you don’t post comments to a company’s blog so they’ll hire you. For the most part, any benefit to you is indirect – traffic back to your blog, third-party advertising, status.
Pro bono work is like this. Some individuals and companies know how to benefit from indirect exposure, for public relations or marketing value. But it also brings great experience.
Part of the value of such experience simply comes from working for a variety of organizations rather than only one. The greater the variety of non-paying companies and industries into which you can speak, the greater variety of paying clients you will be able to serve, because of your ability to see – and speak – from a wider variety of voices. In today’s message-saturated landscape, good news too often gets lost in the shuffle. It is a real, marketable skill to be able to help people figure out how to share their own stories, in their own words, better than they could have said it on their own. It elevates brand awareness and perception, drives traffic to a website, even opens doors for sales. Because good news, shared in a true voice, is good business.
In some ways, being able to identify with another person – the client first, and ultimately the audience – is what it’s all about. Unfortunately, many companies shout their wares from street corners, calling for converts, telling us why we should follow, kaboom kaboom on their drum. But real loyalty and lasting change more often come incrementally, rather than after an altar call. Smart companies show and tell customers that the pathway they offer is one that suits the audience’s own story.
Creating such messages takes practice, and it’s hard to get paid to practice. But if you find organizations that you think are fantastic, and offer them free work, you’ll find that you’re building these muscles.
SOME MORE MR. NICE GUY
Of course, this is all a bit disingenuous. Yes, indirect benefit to the writer is real, but direct benefit goes to the people receiving free work. Being able to identify with others and working with them to find their own voices is all about helping people who are doing great work. For such people, we should do our own great work – with real and quantifiable value – no matter how much or little we get paid.
This act has value in itself. In today’s world there are opportunities galore for us to promote ourselves. And one of our most common mistakes – in our careers, and certainly in other areas of life – is allowing the world around us to tell us what success looks like. And from every side, we are told: you must get credit! You must be somebody, to get anywhere!
Promoting myself is not hard (although it might take work). But it’s not very satisfying, either. However, sharing the needs of others and helping them craft their own stories is a challenge, always new and exciting, and much more richly rewarding. It does cost you something – money, time, yourself. But if your goal isn’t primarily to promote yourself, then you are free in new ways to do wonderful work.
I’ve continued to give free work throughout my career – so far this year, I’ve donated an average of 25 hours per month. I’d love to see every writer in town doing the same, benefiting their own careers but, more importantly, so every good cause in town could benefit. But not only writers – whatever your skill set, it’s needed. Small startups and nonprofits could use help on everything from accounting to management consulting, Web development to word-of-mouth promotion. And in a city with so many great nonprofits and entrepreneurs, it’s easy to pick an issue you care about and find someone who is working on it.
Soon, you might find that they offer you a job or a steady paycheck. But even better, you might find that they don’t.
