Designer Tip: Work For Food
posted by Noah at 8:00 AM
Yesterday I wrote about asking nonprofits to pay something rather than nothing when it comes to design work. However there are times when folks are truly unable to offer a cent, but that doesn't mean they can't pay you.
The age old practice of bartering is still a viable way of doing business (and not just for the folks at Burning Man). Often a company has just never thought of this as an option and if they have an obvious product or service you can use why not trade for the real (not discounted) value of your services.
I've bartered design for advertising, karate classes, massage therapy, and even produce from local farmers. Of course not every business will have something that is so obvious to offer you, however some creative thinking may find a way to put unconventional things to good use. The key is putting the suggestion on the table. You may be surprised by what people offer you.
If you do barter for design work, share your story with me, I'm interested to know how you make it work.
P.S. And even when you are working for cheap or bartering always use a contract.
The age old practice of bartering is still a viable way of doing business (and not just for the folks at Burning Man). Often a company has just never thought of this as an option and if they have an obvious product or service you can use why not trade for the real (not discounted) value of your services.
I've bartered design for advertising, karate classes, massage therapy, and even produce from local farmers. Of course not every business will have something that is so obvious to offer you, however some creative thinking may find a way to put unconventional things to good use. The key is putting the suggestion on the table. You may be surprised by what people offer you.
If you do barter for design work, share your story with me, I'm interested to know how you make it work.
P.S. And even when you are working for cheap or bartering always use a contract.
7 Comments:
I am bartering almost everything on http://www.barterquest.com! I love it.
I barter for coffee. One of the board members of the non-profit I work for also owns a coffee shop. She keeps me caffeinated. hazelnut lattes, triple shot of espresso.
That said, there is somewhere in the miles of tax law, a space specifically for graphic design/ intellectual property. I tried to find it, to add to your post yesterday, but there just aren't enough hours in the day. I had a tax counselor look it up for me a couple years ago.
So you can't write off an hourly service, but if you provide intellectual property, you can write off the fair market value of the property. Building a desk is a service too, but you can write off the whole desk, not just the cost of materials. Repairing or providing maintenance for a desk on the other hand is not a deductible expense. In the same way revising a catalog or website is not.
So, chat with your tax specialist and be insistent they find information about intellectual property.
Thanks for the tip about intellectual property Bri I'll look into it!
We don't do any design stuff where I work, but we do barter with window installers at times. If they need a window or 2 then we may exchange it for their work services. It is nice at times to know that you can count on someone to help you out once they know that you will help them out. Plus, since I am a Mason, I try to help anyone who asks, especially a brother. It feels good to help out with more than just money.
While bartering is an ages old way of doing business without money it has its limitations (that's the reason money was invented).
Nowadays with have a far better money-less payment alternative.
It's the so called time bank or exchange circle.
You create one (a time bank or exchange circle) with at least 2 other people but something like 20 - 100 people are better I think. Too many aren't either though as this is a trust based system.
Then you trade goods and services per time spend on doing/producing them. It means person A is doing graphic design work, let's say 5h of it. Then s/he has an 5h on her account. For 1h of it s/he trades for a haircut at person B. 2h s/he uses for coffee from person C and the last 2h s/he uses for baby sitting by person D.
The time you spent on working end up on your account. You can't accumulate it though or spend it outside the network. Also some time banks do bot allow saving (after a moth you lose the time you haven't spent).
This way we overcome capitalism the DIY way.
Thanks Sum1. I'm a big fan of the time bank idea (I've heard of time dollars being used in several places in the US). To be clear I was proposing barter as an alternative to getting paid nothing, which too often is what nonprofits are asking designers to do. Realistically, asking them to do a trade of services seems much more likely to happen in the short term than setting up a brand new system that they may not want to participate in.
i could tell you some barter stories
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