September 3, 2016

Presumptive non-profit request

The following exchange is from one of my coaching students, Katherine P. She had received a tricky request from a non-profit pro-bono client and handled it beautifully. I asked her if I could share it with you and she graciously consented. It’s definitely going in my swipe file for future reference. Enjoy!

—J

Everything from here down is from KP. Thanks for sharing, KP!

Katherine wrote:

I just recently had a non-profit (who I had agreed to do one minor thing pro bono) come back to the well and ask for more help... surprise - for free. I probably shouldn’t have helped initially, but a friend was on the board and I did it as a favor.

This was an email from one of the other board members;

$NAME said you could help adding donate buttons to the $COMPANY website. How can this happen? Getting potential board members together next Wednesday and would like this feature active. Let me know how I can help. Thanks.

Pretty assumptive, huh?

This was my reply:

Hi $NAME, Thank you for thinking of me. It means a lot that you asked for my help with the website. While I obviously wish I could help, my calendar is booked, and I usually charge $PRICE for this type of project. I don’t want to sign on and tell you I can do this when I couldn’t give you my full attention, and if there’s someone who deserves my best, it’s you. I’m really sorry I can’t help out.

What I heard back? Crickets :)

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