Working together

 
Working with clients that see me as a valuable team member, rather than as just an interchangeable outside vendor, is what keeps me going in this business. It allows us to go so much deeper, make so much more impact and and to get so much more done.

Sound like something you’re looking for, too? Then read on. 

What do you need help with today?

WORD HELP

WORD HELP

You’re doing fabulous, innovative work – you just need to tell people about it. I can write from scratch, taking your ideas and know-how and making them come to life. Or I can take your content and proof, edit, restructure ore rewrite it to give it more punch.

Call on me to:

  • Develop concise, clear web copy to describe what it is you do and the impact you’re making.
  • Build your thought leadership in your field by writing incisive white papers, blog posts or articles that can consistently reach your target audience.
  • “Translate” a densely technical or industry-insider piece of work into everyday language that you can share widely.
  • Clean up and tighten a piece of work that you’ve already written.

DESIGN HELP

DESIGN HELP

You give me a raw document that’s just words and a basic layout and images (if any), and I will give it a polished layout with beautiful graphics so readers will better engage with the content.

Call on me to:

  • Transform your text-heavy Word doc with blurry graphs that jump all over the page into a slick, visually appealing document that won’t get lost on people’s desks.
  • Create a shareable infographic to illustrate a complex idea.
  • Design custom graphics to accompany a presentation or a fundraising appeal.

both = magic!

BOTH!

You know what it is you want to say, but need help to get your messages across in a way that is meaningful, concise and easy on the eyes.

I can:

  • Interview your beneficiaries and gather compelling stories of the impact of your work, challenges, lessons learned, and pull them together to help tell your organization’s story in an honest, ethical way.
  • Help you think of creative, different ways to present your annual achievements and impacts than the usual, run-of-the-mill programmatic report, and package it beautifully.

What can we work on together today?

WORDS

You’re doing fabulous, innovative work – you just need to tell people about it. I can write from scratch, taking your ideas and know-how and making them come to life. Or I can take your content and proof, edit, restructure ore rewrite it to give it more punch.

Call on me to:

  • Develop concise, clear web copy to describe what it is you do and the impact you’re making.
  • Build your thought leadership in your field by writing incisive white papers, blog posts or articles that can consistently reach your target audience.
  • “Translate” a densely technical or industry-insider piece of work into everyday language that you can share widely.
  • Clean up and tighten a piece of work that you’ve already written.

DESIGN

You give me a raw document that’s just words and a basic layout and images (if any), and I will give it a polished layout with beautiful graphics so readers will better engage with the content.

Call on me to:

  • Transform your text-heavy Word doc with blurry graphs that jump all over the page into a slick, visually appealing document that won’t get lost on people’s desks.
  • Create a shareable infographic to illustrate a complex idea.
  • Design custom graphics to accompany a presentation or a fundraising appeal.

BOTH!

You know what it is you want to say, but need help to get your messages across in a way that is meaningful, concise and easy on the eyes.

I can:

  • Interview your beneficiaries and gather compelling stories of the impact of your work, challenges, lessons learned, and pull them together to help tell your organization’s story in an honest, ethical way.
  • Help you think of creative, different ways to present your annual achievements and impacts other than the usual, run-of-the-mill programmatic report, and package it beautifully.

How it works

While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to design and writing, I find that I usually work with clients in a couple of different ways:

Once-off projects

Great for testing the waters, standalone projects work best if they’re sizeable enough to warrant the costs involved in getting to know your organization and how you work. These are usually one complete piece of work – one publication or toolkit, a brand audit or refresh, or a conference poster, for example. They also work well when you have donor funding for a specific deliverable, or if a project is being co-funded or managed by several organizations.

Once-off projects start with me asking you lots of questions, coming back with a proposal (usually including a few options), signing a contract and getting started!

Monthly retainers

Retainers can vary in length and time committment, but in general they are a way for us to work together on a variety of priorities over a period of time. They streamline the getting-to-know-you and contracting process, block off a chunk of my time for your use only, and give you the peace of mind that I’ll be available to tackle what you need when you need it.

Retainers are great if you have a variety of smaller projects (or big ones!) that you need tackled – updating marketing materials, prepping for a conference, regular publication series and the like. It’s also a great way to make use of my more strategic communications skills – helping craft comms strategies, advising on website redesign, and more.

We talk, I ask lots of questions (are you picking up a trend?), come back to you with a proposal, we sign a contract and get going. I provide regular updates and progress reports, and retainers can be renegotiated periodically to make sure it’s continuing to meet both of our needs and expectations.

Packages [coming soon!]

I am in the process of developing a few packages of services that my clients consistently request – including a start-up package to get you on the right track with your communications, a thought leadership package to help you strategically build your reputation and get noticed, and a social media package to develop infographics and content that you can use across your social media platforms. Make sure to sign up for my newsletter to be the first to hear as I release more details!

Packages are a bit of a hybrid between once-off projects and retainers, and are great for those organizations who want to dive a bit deeper but are still a bit hesitant to commit to something longer term.

(Anything you’d specifically like to see included in a package? Drop me a line!)

WARNING: Great looking design and killer content can be addictive.

You may never be able to send out a plain ole’ Word document again…

Some FAQs

Who do you work with?

I work with progressive organizations and businesses committed to making positive change in the world around them – nonprofits, development firms, socially concious businesses, associations, educational institutions and similar organizations.

These organizations can be located anywhere and operate in any sector – I’ve had experiences across many different program areas, and am always keen to learn something new!

How are you different than other writers or designers?

I work exclusively with organizations like yours.  I understand the audiences you speak to – the donors, the stakeholders. I know the industry jargon (and I’m able to avoid using it and explain things in plain English). I can am familiar with complex concepts across a variety of sectors – health, education, governance, enterprise developmment – and can translate your work into simple written and graphic representations.

Also, I write AND design, which helps the finished product work more cohesively together. Even if I’m only doing one or the other on your project, because I can put myself in the other person’s shoes I’m constantly thinking about how my text might be laid out (or how my design can enhance the content). Win.

How do you work with clients in [insert country]?

Pretty much the same way as I work with my local clients, actually. With video chats and phone calls, it’ll feel like I’m just down the road (though you’ll have to supply your own coffee for our meetings, sorry).

I like to kick off with a face-to-face meeting over Skype or Zoom, and then mostly communicate via email for routine conversations. For longer projects, I also build in regular check-in calls over Skype/Zoom to update you in progress, ask questions and make decisions.

South Africa is 6 or 7 hours ahead (depending on daylight savings) of the US East Coast, so if you’re in the US it’s similar to working with Europe. In fact, if we play our cards right we can even capitalize on any time zone differences there might be – I can be working while you sleep, and have drafts ready for review by the time you finish your morning commute.

If you happen to be in Cape Town, we can arrange to meet up, and I also make frequent trips to DC and NY so we can schedule a time together when I’m there. Even with local clients, however, I often find that working remotely makes the best use of both of our limited time!

What's the benefit to working on retainer vs a one-off project?

Hiring me on retainer allows us to build up a longer-term relationship that I’ve found just works better for both of us. I get to know how your business runs, the actors involved and what your needs are in a way that is difficult and time-consuming on a one-off project.

When you hire me on retainer, I set aside a certain amount of time to use only for your work. Even if things get hectic on my side, I’ve allocated that time and protected it for you so you’re never left in the lurch.

Retainers save both of us a lot of time and energy – there’s no quoting on every small project, individual contracts to sign for each piece of work, and much less back-and-forth about scope and invoices.

You can call on me for smaller tasks that otherwise wouldn’t have been worth the hassle of hiring out – I become, in effect, a part of your team.

Ok, that’s a lot of info. Suffice it to say, I’ve got a whole process that will guide us through setting up the right retainer terms that will work for both of us.

Of course, retainers aren’t right for every occasion – drop me a line if you want to discuss your needs in more detail and see if a retainer might be a good fit. If not, we’ll make a plan.

Can you design me something in Word or PowerPoint?

Not usually. I use Adobe Creative Suites software (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop), the design industry standard, for most of my design work. If it’s part of a larger project, I might be able to design you a Word or PowerPoint template that you can use later, but for the most part they’re clunky design tools that don’t allow the control I need to deliver a high-quality product.

Do you design websites?

I’m not a web designer, but I work with some great back-end developers that I can bring in if needed. As part of a larger branding exercise, I have often done design wireframes that I’ve passed along to the folks who do the nuts and bolts and make sure it’s working like a well-oiled machine behind the scenes. I do do graphics and things FOR your website, though – infographics, icons and the like.

Umm, this all sounds great - but what's the investment?

Ugh, the dreaded response – it depends.

On what? Well, on the complexity of the project – the design of a 60 page, visually complex toolkit with loads of custom graphics and images is going to take a different level of involvement from me than, say, a four page, text-based report that uses well-defined brand style guides. And a short blog post is way less involved than a technical white paper. You see my problem?

I’m working on pulling together some packages for you to give you a better sense of costing, but at the moment it’s best to drop me a quick note about your project, I’ll send you a few questions via email or we’ll talk on the phone so I can get a sense of what the project might entail, then I’ll get back to you with a cost estimate asap. Unless your budget is zero (see the next answer) we can usually find a way to make something work with the funds you have available, it might just not have all the bells and whistles you’d hoped for if your budget is very limited.

But I'm a small nonprofit...Can't you do the work for free?

Unfortunately, at the moment I am unable to take on additional pro bono work. I do plan to reopen my competitive pro bono application later this year – make sure you’ve subscribed to my newsletter to be the first to know. I also plan to release lots of free tutorials and content on my blog – again, sign up so you don’t miss anything!

Yes, please! What are the next steps?

Great! Email me and we’ll schedule a brief call where I’ll ask you a ton of questions to get a better sense of the details (don’t worry, it’s not a test – I promise there are no wrong answers…) I’ll then take that info and work up a proposal for you with cost, timeline, etc. From there we’ll either get started (yay!) or make changes to the proposal if I didn’t hit the nail on the head the first time around.

And, of course, don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter to hear about news, special deals, new offerings, and trainings.

It all SOUNDS good, but I'm still not quite sure what I need.

No stress – I’ve got a plan for that, too. If you’re not sure what you need, you can book a “Getting Started” session with me. For a small fee you get an hour call with me where we dive into your situation, find out what your needs really are, and get a sense of how we both work. I follow up with a detailed set of notes from our meeting, along with a list of concrete action items you can get started with right away – content you could develop or repurpose, creative ways you could use your forthcoming publication, and more.

At worst, you get my insight and a concrete to do list to kick-start your process. No pressure at all to keep working with me.

At best, we connect and start working together to start developing the content and visuals that will get you noticed. If you do book to work with me, the fees for the session will be waived.

Sound like something you need? Get in touch.

Want to know more?

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