Creative Invoice Design for NPOs that Stands Out

Creative invoice design for NPOs

resourceful designer episode 320 pro bono working with nonprofits and [Music] Charities welcome to the resourceful designer podcast offering solutions to streamline your graphic and web design business so you can get back to designing and now your host who can considers himself an expert Rock Skipper Mark dickout yeah I've always been very very good at getting way more skips than other people around me whenever I'm throwing a rock I don't know it's just something I guess I got good technique it's another one of my useless skills anyway in this episode I'm going to share some thoughts and my method of working with nonprofits and Charities whenever you're offering to do free pro bono work but before I get to that I just want to make one quick announcement this episode is dropping on October 2nd and I just want to say that 2 days ago on September 30th was the 8th anniversary of the launch of resourceful designer September 30th is international podcast day and I launched this podcast on that day back in 2015 so eight years ago and if you've been with me from the start I want to thank you and if you're not if you're new to the podcast you've got eight years worth of content if you want to go back I know some people have told me they've gone back and listened to it all that's a lot of podcast to listen to but if you want to feel free they're all in the back catalog and even if you just pick and choose episodes here and there welcome I'm glad to have you as part of the resourceful designer family that listens here so thank you once again for your your support over the past 8 years and now pro bono working with nonprofits and Charities now it's inevitable anybody who has been doing this whether it's web design graphic design any sort of design if you've been doing this long enough chances are that people have started to ask you for some free work here or there mostly for types of Charities or events not that they trying to pick your brain or use your skills it's bound to happen I know I get it all the time and if it hasn't happened to you it's only a matter of time before it does now before I go any further I do want to just quickly go over the differences between a nonprofit and a charity now I am talking from a North American perspective I know the rules are very similar in both Canada and the US if you are elsewhere in the world I don't know how these are for you or what the designations are you'll have to look them up but non-profits and charities in the US and Canada are the same and that's the way I'm going to be talking about them today now all Charities are considered nonprofits but not all nonprofits are considered Charities they're a different status now a nonprofit is any organization that qualifies for a tax exempt status by the IRS in the US or the CRA here in Canada so a nonprofit's purpose is to further a social cause and to provide a public benefit in other words to qualify as a nonprofit the organization must serve the public good in some way now this is not to be confused with a not for profit which is similar but not the same a not for-profit actually serves its members instead of the general Community sports clubs are a great example of a not for-profit organization because all the money raised goes towards the club itself not the general populace sororities and fraternities are another great example of a not for-profit organization now a charity on the other hand is a form of nonprofit with a philanthropic goal that aims to improve the quality of life for the community and Beyond now there are many little nuances between Charities and nonprofits but the main difference that I want to cover here today when it comes to working as a graphic or web designer with a nonprofit or a charity is that only Charities can issue a tax receipt and I'm going to cover more more on the importance of that a little bit later now one thing I want to put out there it's to squal the myth that being a nonprofit or a charity means that they have no budget in fact most nonprofits and Charities do put a reasonable amount of money aside for marketing purposes especially if it's a national or International Organization many of them have lots and lots of money so just because somebody contacts you saying they're working for a nonprofit or a charity doesn't mean they don't have money I myself have done lots and lots of work for Habitat for Humanity which is an international charity and they have big budgets when it comes to marketing for nonprofits I've worked with several festivals there was a Highland Games Festival that I've worked with for over a dozen years we had a local balloon festival that I work with for many years these were both nonprofit organizations but they had a very good budget for marketing so if you're ever approached by a nonprofit or charity to do work don't immediately assume that they're asking for free work because many times they're not in fact over the years some of my most lucrative clients have been nonprofits and Charities now even though as I said most nonprofi and Charities do have a budget to work with there are some that don't especially when you get to the smaller local charities and it's these organizations who try to appeal to our passionate side and ask for a free or discounted design work now since today's episode is titled pro bono I'm going to concentrate on those organizations that are asking for free work now whether it is a nonprofit profit or a charity there are advantages and disadvantages of working for free as a designer again whether you're a graphic designer or a web designer now I'll start with the drawbacks so some of the drawbacks of working for free one of the big ones is since there's no money actually exchanging hands if you're doing the work for free there's no way for them to appreciate the value of what you're doing of your service now I know some designers get around this by issuing a receipt that shows the full amount and then they discount it 100% so that the bottom of the invoice or I should say invoice not receipt the bottom of the invoice says zero but they actually can see what the full amount was well that's a good way to do it however the only people that see that are the people who actually handle the invoice so whoever you're giving it to and maybe if they have to give it to an account person or whatever and in most cases if it has a balance of zero they're not even going to put it through the books so whoever you're dealing with will see it and then nobody else does and when that person later on talks to somebody else that's in the organization or somebody else outside the organization and if the topic of the work you did comes up that person's not going to uh say that oh well the work cost this much but they gave us 100% discount so we paid zero no they're just going to say oh it didn't cost us anything so others around that don't know the full amount that didn't actually see the invoice there's no way for them to appreciate the value of what you brought for them and that in my opinion is a huge drawback of doing free work pro bono work for any organization now another drawback is you're often treated like a volunteer and not the professional that you are now some nonprofit profits do have employees that are paid but most of the people that are working there are volunteers and even though volunteers come from all works of Life as a volunteer you're not taken as seriously as if you were a professional and I've seen that happen before where it doesn't matter how qualified how good the designer is it it comes back to just not being appreciated a and sometimes because you're viewed simply as a volunteer some people may try to micromanage your designs something that they wouldn't be doing if they were paying you to do the work and this brings me to my last drawback that I have here I I wrote some point form notes down is due to all of this you may feel unappreciated and it may even cause you to end up resenting the cause you know you may not want to work with them again or the the next time somebody talks about that you may have a bad taste in your mouth because of the way you were treated and that's too bad because the the whole purpose of these nonprofits and Charities are to bring awareness to certain causes that are dear to some people's hearts and you don't want to feel any sort of resentment towards that because of the way you were treated because you were offering your work for free now I I'm just want to stipulate that this doesn't happen all the time in fact it doesn't even happen most of the time but it is a possibility anytime you're offering free work and I just want to make sure you're aware of that now let's talk about the benefits of working for free anytime you do pro bono work is a great way to build up a portfolio especially if you're fairly new to the industry you're starting out and you don't have a big portfolio doing pro bono work is a great way to build it up you get to build these great assets that are actually being used in the world and add them to your portfolio saying I did these so that is one big Advantage the other advantage of doing pro bono work is it's a great way to build exposure yes I know exposure is a dreaded word when it comes to the design industry but you can't deny that getting exposure is valuable and exposure comes in many different forms I know whenever I design something for a charity or a nonprofit I insist that I have my name designed by Marksman design on the piece in some cases like I mentioned that I did work with the balloon festival I gained exposure by offering them a discount and in exchange for that discount I was given an advertising package with them which meant that my logo and my website appeared on their flyer it appeared on around the venue on boards it even appeared on one of the baskets to one of the hot air balloons so that got me exposure by offering them a small discount to the work I was doing now another benefit of doing pro bono work is you can use it as an opportunity to explore and experiment with different design techniques the clients are not paying you in this case you're offering the work for free which gives you a lot more freedom to do things that you want to do it do it in a way you see fit now this may be a conflict with uh one of the drawbacks that I mentioned earlier how some people like to micromanage you so maybe they may not like the direction you're taking or the design style you're taking but you can remind them that they're not paying you for this and this is what you want to do this is you're offering it for free and I mean it's one of of those things that you have to weigh the pros and cons to it but I know I've often leared new things because I was experimenting or exploring different design Styles while working on pro bono work and the other benefit of pro bono is it's a great way to network especially if you get to present because most of the time there'll be a board of directors which may be anywhere from you know eight to a dozen or more people that you can go present your work to and most of these boards for these nonprofits and Charities are business people so it's a great way for you to get your name out there and show what you're capable of and be sure if you're doing work for a charity that's local go out and support them go walk around during an event attend whatever it is that they're doing even if you're not participating like if it's a marathon and you don't run you don't have to participate in it but you can can go show up be there and if anybody asks you can mention that yeah you do the design work for them it's a great way to network so those are some of the drawbacks and benefits to offering work for free now let's say you do decide that yeah I'm going to do this and I'm going to offer it for free I want to share my policy that I use that I've used for many many years that kind of gets me through all of this with all the multiple people that call because every year I get dozens of people calling me and asking if there's anything I can do or any way I can help them out and the way I curb having to either be overwhelmed with all this free work to do and not insulting people is I set a policy many years ago that I'll only offer Pro Bona work to three nonprofits or Charities per year and of course if if it's a charity or nonprofit that's willing to pay me then they don't count but I've done free work for local sports organizations I've done free work for causes like raising money for there there was a bunch of families that got dislocated in um in a fire they lost their home and all that I did some work for that and I didn't charge them you know I've done work years ago for a a dog rescue and there's so many but my policy is to never do more than three in a year so that way when people are calling me up you know in September October asking me to do work I tell them that I've already reached my quota for the year and that if they want me to do anything with them next year they need to contact me in January before my spaces fill up and this is a great way because it stops the conversation right there the people go oh okay I understand we'll put you on the calendar and contact you in January and some of them do and some of them don't it makes it very easy for me to turn down this sort of work if I don't want to do it now that doesn't mean that if I have three and something's really intriguing I won't take it on it just gives me that out should I decide that this is something I don't want to work on instead of just saying no now I do have my own personal criteria on how I choose the nonprofits and Charities that I will work with now I'll tell you what mine is but you have to come up with your own criteria on how you're going to decide which organizations are worth your time and which are not so I have five things that I wrote down here and the first one is I have to have some sort of connection to the cause you know I'm a dog person so if somebody contacts me and says they want to they're asking if I can do some work for a dog rescue or something like that yes I'm going to be much more inclined to want want to offer the work to them as opposed who some somebody who contacts me to ask if I can do work for I don't know uh sea turtles not that I'm against sea turtles I think they're great but I don't have a direct connection to sea turtles I don't live near the sea I don't even know if I've ever seen one in my life but I deal with dogs all the time so I'm much more likely to work with somebody who's working in that space with dogs because of the connection so my one criteria is I have to have a connection I've done work for the Diabetes Association because my mom died from complications with diabetes I have a connection to that and if somebody else contacted me and asked me for work for some disease that I've never heard of before I may be reluctant to work with them because I don't know what it is so that is my number one criteria is that I have to have some sort of connection with the cause before I agree to work with them now number two is I have to have time available on my schedule I will not bump paying clients in order to do free work if I have time sure I would gladly take it on and fill those spots but if my schedule is full and somebody contacts me to ask if I can do something for free for them the answer is going to be no I will not compromise my business to help somebody else do something for free now my third criteria is the project has to be fun I mean if I'm going to offer my time for free I have to get some enjoyment out of doing it I mean if I'm designing something posters and brochures and websites yeah I enjoy doing that but if somebody's contacting me because they have this ID tag and they just need 100 or so photos inserted and their names the name of the person typed in that's not a fun job to do and I'll be less inclined to take it on now number four of my criteria is the the what's in it for me thing and that comes again to what can I get out of this is there any way for me to get exposure is there a way for me to network is there a way for me to get my name out there and possibly benefit my company yes you want to help these nonprofits in these Charities you know it's something good to do but it's also nice to get something in return that'll benefit you so if they're willing to add uh give you a free ad in their brochure or give a link back to your website or mention you during some sort of speech that you did all the design work that's something that's in it for me and if they are willing to do something like that I'm much more inclined to work with them and number five and this is a big one for me is can I get a tax receipt for the work I do now as I mentioned earlier the differen is between a nonprofit and a charity is that only Charities can issue a tax receipt and and that makes a big difference if I can get a tax receipt for my work then I'm much more inclined to lean that way as opposed to somebody who I can't now let me just touch on tax receipt actually before I get to that though I just want to mention those are my five criteria for choosing a or choosing to offer pro bono work to a charity or a nonprofit I have to have a connection to the cause I have to have time on my schedule it has to be a project that'll be fun or entertaining there has to be something in it for me and if I can get a tax receipt it's a big bonus now speaking of tax receipts tax receipts are issued by Charities for monetary and physical donations not for time I've seen this discussion many times no charity or they shouldn't I'm not saying no charity will but a charity should not it it's not permitted in the US and in Canada for charity to give a tax receipt for the time somebody spends the time volunteer time that they give so somebody can't say well I'll donate 10 hours of my time and my time's worth $100 an hour in exchange for my work I want a tax receipt for $1,000 it won't work that way however there is a workaround that I've been using for years and it works great and most Charities will gladly agree to this method here's how I do it whenever I work with a charity and even when I I work with a nonprofit I always treat every nonprofit and every charity like any other client and I invoice them now in the case of a nonprofit I'll invoice them the full amount sometimes I'll offer them a discount but with a charity this is what I offer them I will invoice them the full amount as as if they're any client I give them the full invoice and I expect them to pay that invoice and once they pay the invoice I then turn around and I donate the full amount of that invoice back to them and that donation now is a monetary donation that I'm giving to them in exchange for a tax receipt does that make sense so I do the work I charge them the full amount for the work they pay me the full amount for the work and then I take that payment and I then donate it back to them in exchange for a tax receipt now this method has multiple benefits first of all as I mentioned earlier that you know sometimes people don't know the value well in this case I'm invoicing them the full amount so they get to see the full value of the work I did for them and unlike giving a discount of 100% if anybody's talking later on to somebody else and they say well how much should that cost they know how much it costs cuz they actually had to pay that invoice so if I did a $5,000 website for them they'll say well this website cost us $5,000 so it's a great way for them to be able to talk about your work and show the value and the people at the organization that the charity they can appreciate the value of the work you're doing for them because they know what the price is and because of that they'll appreciate the work more you won't be treated as much like a a volunteer as I said earlier they're going to be less likely to micromanage you because you're charging them the full amount as if they were a regular client now they because they're paying this amount and this is considered a marketing expense they get to deduct this amount as a as an expense for their business or their organization so they get that benefit they're paying me but it becomes an expense for them and then I in turn will donate the money back in exchange for a tax receipt which helps me on my taxes so it ends up being a win-win for both sides and I've been doing this for years and I've shared this method with many people over the years who have adopted it as well and they say it's working very well for them now as I said unfortunately this only works with Charities you can't do this with nonprofits I've never actually dealt with a foundation a foundation is actually a uh a fourth one we've got nonprofits not for-profits Charities and then there's foundations foundations I believe can also issue a tax receipt but don't quote me on that I've never actually dealt with one and I didn't think to look it up until just now but anytime I'm dealing with a charity first of all I'd like to be paid because after all who doesn't so if they have the budget like when I did work for Habitat for Humanity they paid me in full for that work in some cases with a charity I have offered just a discount and then donated the discount back that sort of thing in other words I would charge them the full amount and then I would donate 20% of that back to them in exchange for a tax receipt so it's kind of like they get a 20% or whatever 20% of the invoice as a discount but most of the time with Charities it's the full amount and then I just donated it all back to them so anyways dealing with nonprofits or Charities is a a big part of our business uh as I mentioned if they haven't contacted you yet it's only a matter of time at some point in your career you will be approached by somebody asking if you can do work for them for their cause and the things I want you to keep in mind is they may have a budget so don't automatically assume that they want the work for free but in some cases they do or they would appreciate it because they don't have a very big budget they may only come in with you know a certain amount of money available and it's nowhere near or what you would normally charge then it's up to you you have to have your own criteria on whether or not it's worth working with them if they come and they say we need all this work done we only have $11,000 are you willing to say okay pay me $11,000 and I'll do all that work for you even though it's worth two or three or four times that amount or not you have to make that decision what works for you but I can tell you one thing anytime you do work for any sort of nonprofit or charity something that means something to you you have some connection to it does make you feel really good doing the work for them especially when you go to whatever event it is and you see your work there out being displayed and people admiring it it's a great feeling so anyways I wanted to touch on that today it's been on my mind lately because uh well actually somebody contacted me and uh in this case I did not end up working with them but it got me thinking about it and uh after some conversations in the resourceful designer community and that I saw in some design groups on Facebook I thought that doing pro bono work would be a great topic to cover on the podcast and I hope you agree but that's it for this week speaking of the resourceful designer Community if you're interested we would love to have you visit resourceful designer.com Community to learn what the community is about and to join take advantage of this great group of people that can help you grow your design business so thank you very much for listening as we celebrate 8 years of the resourceful designer podcast whether you've been around for hundreds of episodes or only a handful or even if this is your first one I want to thank you for tuning in I do appreciate you until next time I am Mark deot wishing you all the best with your design business and as always reminding you to stay [Music] creative thanks for listening to the resourceful designer podcast at resourceful [Music] designer.com