More tales from the side of freelancing that nobody tells you about.
Prospect #1
December 2019
A prospective client asks a friend of hers if the friend knows any grant writers. The friend emails me; I email the friend; the friend shares my credentials with the prospect.
January 2020
I don’t hear anything.
February 2020
I get a call from the prospect. We speak for 50 minutes, and the call goes well. At one point, I ask about budget. She says she’s thinking about $X/month; I say I’d need at least double that amount.
She asks me to come to her office, which is 75 minutes away, for a 90-minute meeting with her team. I agree.
When the calendar invite arrives the next day, I ask if she can share some sample grants, so I can get a sense for the workload. She declines, and says she wants to meet first. Here’s that exchange:
Me: “As we discussed, there’s so much variety with this kind of work — to give just one example: Does the donor want a 10-page proposal, or a 100-page one? — that it’s difficult to provide prices in the abstract. Accordingly, do you think it would make sense, before we all get together, to share a few proposals and reports you’ve written, so I can get a sense for how much work is involved? That way, I might even be able to give you a ballpark estimate beforehand, to make sure we’re aligned on budget.”
Her: “After thinking about this, I would prefer to wait until Monday to see if we are a good fit for each other rather than sending you our current style of grant submission. Our goal is to have a new voice/perspective on the process.”
The day before our meeting, she asks to push the meeting back for three weeks.
Prospect #2
January 11
A prospective client emails a group of which we’re both members. She says she needs an editor for her monthly publication.
January 11
I email her my credentials.
January 13
She emails me an editing test, due by January 17.
January 14
I complete the test and send it to her.
January 23
She replies, apologizes for the delay, and promises to take a look at the edit I did “today and be in touch soon.”
January 30
I follow-up.
January 31
She says I got the gig and that she’ll send over the contract on February 3.
February 3
She asks for my address. I give it to her.
February 4
She asks if I can start in mid-February. I say yes.
February 17
I follow-up. She apologizes for the delay and says the “contract should be signed by all parties and sent over tomorrow!”
February 18
She emails: “Sorry again for the delay. Just waiting on our CFO to sign the contract, as he was not in today.”
February 20
The contract arrives. Even though the job description says the position will last for 11 months, the contract cuts this time frame in half (to six months). Equally without warning: The 10 hours a month have now become 10 articles a month, for the same budget.
