One of the most common questions I’m asked is: how do you charge a nonprofit? My response is normally: Just like everyone else. So here is my answer to a new freelancer’s questions on the matter:
As I told you on the phone, the way you want to run your business is totally up to you. Some people might say you should always be paid for work not matter what. I agree when you do a job for free because you “believe in the cause” you are hurting yourself and the industry. It’s fine for my Dad who has a full time job and likes to volunteer at United Way to take pictures. But he’s not as well trained or as good as you and I are NOR does he have to pay for his gear/computers/CF cards/etc. that we do when we work for this as our job. So people who get our services should be paying … in some way.
My feeling is photographic services are exchange goods. Sometimes its money, sometimes its goods. I did a job once for a college where I got paid with a brand new copy of the Adobe Creative Suite (a $1000 cost for me to buy it outright so instead they bought it for me in exchange). Hell, I’d do a job for a side of beef if it made business sense. Remember Atticus Finch. However, I usually discount my rates for nonprofits depending on their size and the situation.
Sometimes nonprofits will realize how important the photography is and give you a great deal of money. This is rare.
Sometimes nonprofits will say, “Well we can’t pay you b/c we’re a nonprofit.” That’s absolute and total crap most of the time. They pay their employees. They pay for posters, copies, food for parties, the cleaning lady, all other sorts of services…. What they mean is: “We don’t want to pay for photography because we’ve never done it before and haven’t been educated about how important it is and someone will do it around here for free.” Joe the IT Guy might have been taking their photos from that point on and they don’t realize how great your pictures will be in comparison so you need to educate them about it.
I usually say, “Well, if this were a corporate job, I’d charge XXX but since you are a nonprofit I will only charge you XXX because I understand you are limited in their budget.” Then I tell them how they can use it in posters, brochures, on the web and I usually suggest they look into getting a graphic designer on the team so we can really make the images pop. Then I send them to my “Clips” section on my website where the Calvert Foundation stuff is and how good that looked with the Graphic Designers help.
Always start the conversation assuming they will pay you. They are going to start it off thinking you’ll do it all for free. SO you need to find a common ground. With the right portfolio they will see that they need you and show what you can do for them.
Now, there are 3 ways to approach nonprofits when you want to talk about money:
a) Ask them to come up with a budget for photography and see what you get. If they say, we just don’t have the money. You make the call. I usually say no. If they can’t even come up with a $100 then I’m not sure I want them handling my pictures. You can say, “Oh well. That’s a shame b/c I really wanted to work with you!!” Or “Okay, but next time you are coming up with a budget for (this project) I’d love to be considered when you allocating funds. If you decide later on that you can shuffle some funds around I’d love to be on the team.”
b) If this is a nonprofit you want to work with in another country and they’ve , you can always say, “You can fly me over there, pay for my lodging and food and I’ll waive my usual fee.” That’s perfectly acceptable and will be a huge benefit to you if you ask them to stay in the country for a longer time than just when they need you. Then you can go to another client and say, “Hey I’ll be in (foreign locale) for 3 weeks in August, would you be intersted in any coverage while I’m there?” and then you charge them for the time and waive the trip costs. I usually charge a foreign travel fee though because it’s more expensive over there.
c) You can always suggest when they are grant writing to write a portion of the grant for photography. Meaning, they are applying for a grant for the org and they were going to ask for $50,000 but instead they can write a $55,000 budget into that with an extra 5K for photos. They can get a LOT of pictures out of that money and a lot of images for an collection for their marketing for the year.
Remember too that rights usage is just as important in this case. DO NOT give away your pictures dammit. They will take advantage of this in a big way. You have to explain that they only get a limited time to use them for the fee you charge. I usually give 2 years for promotional materials and internal publications and 3 years for websites. That’s a STUPID good deal and I am diligent about following up. I make them pay for the pictures after their terms are up.
I explain it like, “It’s like leasing a car. I own the images because I took them but you are leasing them with the fees you are paying. Just like a car, if you wanted to own them outright, you’d have to pay a lot more but this way you can pay limited fees and still get all the use out of it you want.” If they want to keep coming back to you for edits, explain that it’s $100 research/photoshop fee each time. “Just like that car is leased form the dealer, if you want to keep bringing it into the shop, you’ve got to pay for it.”
Finally, remember this: if you believe in this kind of work, you need to be able to keep in business to keep helping them out. If you don’t charge for the pictures, give away your rights, are lazy about billing or aren’t firm in the negotiations, then you’ll go out of business and wonder years from now: “How did that happen when I was doing such good work for such good people?!?” You don’t want that.
SO there you go! That’s my opinion on charging nonprofits! :)
Jamie
[...] 28, 2008 Check out Jamie’s List for some great advice: How to Charge Nonprofits, spot on tips from our own Jamie [...]
I am not sure I agree with your reasoning. Basically it is best to start off with the understanding that the designation of non-profit is simply a tax designation and does not mean that the people working as salaried employees there are not paid wages that are decent and competitive. These orgs may exploit naive students to work for next to nothing but the exec and middle management are paid well in my experience. The primary use for the term non-profit is so that donators can get tax write offs. The non-profits will bank on newbie photogs’ lack of understanding and their good will to bargain down rates but often these orgs actually have very deep pockets. It is worth checking on the addresses of these orgs to get an idea of their funds. Their addresses will be in high rent office buildings or they actually own their office space.
Photogs cannot survive working for no income so the concept of working for free in a foreign country for a US NGO seems exactly the same as giving your work away here in the US. What’s the difference? If the org doesn’t have the money to pay you, how come thy have the money to fly you and house you? But as long as I am venturing overseas: you also certainly do not have to ask any orgs permission to stay longer than the time they are paying you for (or the time you are giving to them for free). That’s between you and the airline company. If the org is actually buying your tix, you tell them the dates which includes the shooting days. It is important to be alert for the shoot and so build in adjustment time as you see fit to get over jet lag prior to the shoot, post shoot lingering makes no difference in cost to your client assuming you would take over the cost of hotel and food after the shoot. So again there’s no need for hesitation to give dates of your travel that extends beyond the shoot time. There has to be some major benefit to you to take on a shoot for gratis and I do not think there’s any reason to be shy about why you are dong the shoot, in theory to see/shoot the location where the work is to be done, otherwise why do the shoot in the first place? There has to be profit to you one way or another.
Frankly, the people hiring photogs at the non-profits that I work with tend to be pretty young and not greatly experienced with hiring photogs. Asking for their budgets may plunge them into an area about which they know little. Also the young ones are the ones who are getting underpaid, so they have no reality check on what it takes to run a business and probably have never heard of CODB (cost of doing business) so the fees a professional charges may seem high to them. They are not exactly spending their time hiring photogs. I bid on work at my normal fees which are posted publically on my web site so if there is to be any bargaining about fees, they at least know where I am starting from. Frankly, once bargaining starts, I do not hang around for too long. 9 times out of 10, they want more discounts than you are willing to give.
Basically I think you are giving really bad advice here. I don’t consider photography as “exchange goods”…not goods of any kind. I am providing a service; the recording of people/events/structures in image form. I discuss my time in terms of creative fees and the physical ‘goods’ as you call it can take several forms, from a CD to online galleries to albums/books. I am certainly not selling a loaf of bread i.e. not baked ‘goods’ to be consumed. Photography is not a commodity but a service IMO. The client pays for quality that is your distinctive voice because otherwise the people like your father would get all the work. He is not doing any favors to his daughter’s profession for sure. My heavens, check out the salaries at United Way or what it pays for advertising in major newspapers and on TV and buses! Very possibly more than you earn in 5 years! If an org says it doesn’t have a budget for photography that doesn’t mean anything, they’ve got a budget for ‘communications’, or public affairs or whatever, the person who picked up the phone to call you is getting paid on some line item. If they are refusing to pay anything, send them to your father and let them have crappy/low res images for their ‘no budget’.
I gotta say I am really shocked by your writing here, very bad for the profession. If you think I am off base try joining the APA net list serv and posting what you wrote here and see the reaction. Mine is mild, believe me!!
Vivian