www.inkthinkerblog.com — I’ll be blogging my notes for the WIW 2008 Annual Conference and posting them between sessions throughout the day. I’ll be fixing typos later!

Moderator
Randy Sly

Panel
Peter Bowerman
Cecilia Sepp
Howard Clare

CS: All social media is is any form of communication that connects people with each other so they can share information or news. For example, the ancient marketplace is where people went to find out what’s going on. Another example is “cafe society” in Europe in the 1920s. The telephone in the 1950s. Today’s social media is just an evolution of concepts we already know, and it’s just the next step beyond the telephone. I look to look at it as we (the people 35-50) are the most adaptable generation, not the greatest one. We keep embracing and integrating these new concepts and changes.

CS: Today what we look at as social media is e-mail and instant messaging, cell phones and text messages. What I think gets people confused is LinkedIn, MySpace (which really isn’t as bad as it’s been made out to be), and Facebook. You have to put in the time to make the connections and work your network. To bake a cake, you have to break a couple eggs, and then you have to wait for the cake to bake.

CS: Associations are a great example of social media, but the whole industry that IS social media can’t seem to get a grip on this. Associations are getting all caught up in the technology but they’re forgetting the purpose. People get silly about technology. It’s like any tool: you need the right tool for the right job, and you need to know your audience. Applying it to your writing business is like ay other thing you would do with marketing: You have to apply it, you have to use it, and you have to keep it updated.

HC: If you want to understand social networking, read. In the Washington Post, almost every week without fail there’s an article about social networking, and recently there was an article that didn’t even have a mention of technology in it. There are a lot of applications for it, don’t be afraid of it, it looks more daunting than it actually is. I’m going to talk about it internally and externally in the context of corporate organizations.

HC: It’s had a lot of fits and starts. A lot of organizations are embracing it but many aren’t still. There are a variety of reasons but a lot of it revolves around corporate IT, and it puts up a lot of road blocks. It’s in the name of security, but still. Organizations like Freddie Mac are bound by IT and regulations. Sodexo is really developing online more and more, using wikis and blogs and amending their e-communication policies to keep things under control. And a lot of entrepreneurial companies are doing more things in the social media, and it’s good business more than anything else.

HC: Internal social networking. A company called Serena has Facebook Fridays. 800+ employees in 18 countries worldwide, and the encourage employees to use an hour of every Friday to go on Facebook. They’re not only making connections, like friendships in the corporate structure, but they collaborate more. Existing intranets are ineffective in a lot of cases for finding documents or sharing information. Serena developed the internal Facebook group and some of their own applications, and secured it behind their own firewall. Improved recruiting, increased morale and retention, and contributes directly to the bottom line.

HC: Advertising on Facebook and MySpace is working in the audience’s mind set and network going beyond the tpical banner ads to do things like send a virtual bottle of water or a Tic Tac to a friend, and develop relationships with the brands. Contact the agencies that are doing the work for these organizations, or take a crack at Coke yourself.

HC: There’s a hospital in Dallas, Parkland, reaching out to teens on sex, reproduction, and general health topics and so they created a MySpace page with a physician Q&A and are reaching the audience on their level in a way that’s not threatening, and it’s getting people in the front door at their family planning clinics as well as attracting people (inadvertently) who are interested in jobs with this hospital.

HC: Dell computer has a site called IdeaStorm that allows customers to interact directly with company employees at Dell that’s all about sharing ideas, and Dell is committed to listening to these suggestions and using them. Starbucks is doing the same basic thing. In the face of the recession, people aren’t buying as many lattes, so they created MyStarbucks for people to submit ideas and feedback. (like people want free wireless [listen up, Starbucks!]). And Toyota has a stand-alone site for the Toyota Prius for owners to share their passions about their hybrids and allows visitors to represent themselves visually and virtually online and attracted 10K+ new users in 2 months.

HC: Don’t be helpless. Read. Go online. Venture online, I should say. Go to the company sites. See what they’re doing with their blogs and their customer-centric sites. Go to a site that you’re interested in and subscribe to the RSS feed. In becoming a resource to the organizations out there, don’t rty to be a jack of all trades. Become an expert in your area whatever it is., and you’ll be the trusted freelancer. RESOURCE: www.blogholtz.com by Shel Holtz. Good resource to see what’s going on.

RS: Using social networking to develop your freelance business. “There’s nothing new under the sun,” and that’s still true. our connections are the currency of our success. The nature of how these connections are made is what’s changing. “The medium is the message.” When it comes to freelance success or developing your business, you can’t depend on the new media to do that by itself — but it is a great cmponent that we can add on as a value add. I propose a bifocal approach that w don’t limit the amount of face to face networking that we do. Networking as an oportunity to earn new business has been raised to a new level. BNI, Chambers of Commerce, nw contexts to share what you do and how you can support others’ businesses. Face to face entworking isa great environment for freelance writers because we’re people who work with words.

RS: Your elevator speech is even more important now, and you have 30 seconds to tell people what you do and how you can do it for them. We just don’t know what to say about our business. We know what we do, but wr don’t know how ot describe it. Decided to do something different, so wrote “WriteView, LLC, Hears a Who” [which he just read and which was brilliant] Writing is transferrable from the physical space into the virtual space. People are literally portraying their lives online.

(Peter Bowerman is not on LinkedIn. I would be shocked, but since he just got a blog, I’m not that surprised. Come on, PB, you know you want to connect to me.)

RS: LinkedIn is a way of building your online reputation. Answer questions, add to your online profile. If you give the best answer, DING DING DING! FastPitch, PlaxoPulse, Zing. The key to LinkedIn is not just going there, but rather that I’m going to begin working my sysfem. I’m going to begin using LinkedIn to make myself visible. Every time you do something, you appear on the screen of each of your contacts. The more you work with it, the more practical it becomes. The same is true with all of these. One college is using Facebook exclusively to advertise campus events. The more you use these, the less scary they become.

RS: LISTSERVs [I think he means e-mail discussion lists, grr] are another great example, and a way to be seen as a subject matter expert that allows you to promote your services and reach a huge audience. The internet is becoming a whole new way to turn connections into business. Example of a writer who got a contract within 24 hours of getting on LinkedIn. Don’t count on it, but the thing is, it’s all about visibility: visibility through face to face networking, visibility through being on LinkedIn and these other social networking sites, and continuing to propagate yourself to all these other places.

PB: Literal interpretation of the session title: read from other people’s comments on a WFW blog post. [note to self: insert link here] I personally believe that the economy has very little bearing on one person’s financial success, so don’t read the papers and what they’re saying about how this is a bad time to start a business or whatever.

(audience question time!)

PB: Better to have a smaller network with better people. Way to avoid “inconvenient reciprocity” (ie, crap people send you on Facebook like stupid applications and messages and stuff.)

(Cecilia Sepp — YES, WIW/AIW should have a wiki. We may not be able to make money from it directly, but we will indirectly because it will bring people to the organization and generate membership, subscriber, and event revenues. Why is this not on the list already??? It’s brilliant.)

HC: Article marketing — viral marketing technique to promote yourself as an expert.

PB: Creating free reports is valuable. Driving people to your site and creating that list. Create a report and sell it as an e-book. It starts monetizing some of the stuff that’s in your head. And that takes no more effort than it takes to create it if you’re going to stick with the e-book route in the short term.

(audience question about the ethics of ghostwriting a blog)

CS: There is absolutely nothing wrong with hiring blog ghostwriters. It’s the same as ghostwriting a book. It’s a job like any other. What you have to do is, if you aren’t going to write in their voice, just make up one for them, and then that is their voice. (Example: TV characters who have their own blogs. It’s a promotional tool.) Mozart would not have died broke if he could have written for commercials, and he still would have been a great composer (quoting Fame).

PB: And that can really build your value if you crease a persona and a voice for that person. I always joke with clients but I’m not really joking that I’m going to make them sound like a million bucks. They will sound brilliant and articluate and witty, and who wouldn’t pay for that?

CS: There are so many thigns out there. We’re moving to a less-paper world not a paperless world. Writing will never disappera. We like to touch things. When we meet people we shake their hands. We have to touch things, see them, and feel them.

HC: It’s a generational thing. I have a daughter who’s 20 and she doesn’t read newspapers. She prefers to get her news electronically.

(I commented that I’m a digital native and I still like to have a book in my hand because it’s a tactile, sensual experience.)

(Then we got into a discussion about the smell of mimeographed pages and Sharpies.)

PB: To have somehting to give to a potential client at a show, whether they actually read it, makes an impression on them. Sometimes we will be very well paid to write stuff that no one eve reads, and I’m okay with that.

CS: You get paid whether they use it or not. They’re buying your time and your expertise.

Contents Copyright © 2006-2014 Kristen King

www.inkthinkerblog.com — I’ll be blogging my notes for the WIW 2008 Annual Conference and posting them between sessions throughout the day. I’ll be fixing typos later! (These people talk fast, so this is FULL of typos.)

Moderator
Joseph Barbato, Barbato Associates

Panelists
Beth Duris, Trout Magazine
Chuck Anderson, National Parks Conservation association
Marjorie Lightman, QED Associates, LLC

(Note to self: Stop being so darn helpful and mising the begining of sessions.)

JB: Find out who needs fundraising writing? Who’s running a capital campaign? You can go to various sources like the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Websites, professional organizations (Assoc. of Fundraisng Profs — can join as a writer), find and meet the people running development offices around town and learn early on who’s planning what. Any writer with strong writing skills can do this kind of material. It’s the difference between writing about Harvard for New York Magazine and writing a brochure FOR Harvard. Different tone, different angle. Bring a lot of patience to the table — you’ll be writing smeone who may or may not have a very good editorial sense.

(There is a guy in front of me playing solitaire on his laptop. Dude, what is WRONG with you?)

JB: You must always look for a deep pocket. The storefront agency might well ask you to write for little or nothing. If you’re in a position to do that, do it. But places like Harvard University are used to paying market rates for everything they buy, including writing. Some places will start playing the charity card immediately, and I would recommend that you avoid those places like the plague. Some agencies devote a certain amount of time to pro bono work, and that is a favor those agencies are doing for the organizations. If they want YOU to do the work, you should expect them to pay a competitive price and you should meet their schedule.

(apparently everyone’s speaking their say and then it moves down the line, so no back and forth right now)

JB: Each year, the Chronicle of Philanthropy rates the top 100 nonprofits. Safe bet, those are well-run organziations used to paying the coin of the realm for the things they do, and chances are that they’re willing to pay for what they want you to do.

BD: Previous staff writer at Nature Consevancy, currently editor of Trout Unlimited’s magazine, and freelance conservation development work. First of all, there’s a huge range of nonprofits that you might potentially be working with as clients. The Nature Conservancy is much, much bigger than any other conservancy organization out there, and Trout is very small. In a smaller place, tehre’s a different level of expectation and sophistication for the writer there. In bigger places, you spend a lot of time talkign to all of these experts and listening to their point of view and trying to really synthesize that.

BD: You come in with a fresh persoective to help them get away from their corporate point of view and combine individual perspectives into something will resonate with an outside person. The bigger an organization is, the more bureaucratic it is. As an outside person, that’s something you can really offer them: You’re not drinking the Kool Aid every day. You’re the one who’s thinking about the reader’s point of view, someone who ust wants to be interested and inspired. You’re not steeped in the jargon.

BD: you have to realize when you’re hearing them, that’s just too much information. You’re coming in as an expert, so you have some leverage there and you need to exercise it because that’s part of what they’re paying for. In a big group, it’s a lot of saving them from themselves. In a smaller group, it’s an opportunit to direct them and help them understand what they need. You can come in wiht a little bit of knowledge and look real smart. You are there kind of tyring to educate them and give them ideas and helping them to see themselves in a larger context.

BD: For instance, when you get really into wriitng about an organization’s campaign, it may be more or less well developed internally. It’s up to you as a writer to help an organiztion flesh out the oportunites and initiative in a way that will be compelling, figure out the context in which they’re working, and convey that as well. What really is so special about this? You have to challenge people to say, let’s get down to brass tacks here. How does this compare? You need to spend itme up front before you start writing knowing all the information you can about hw this initiative fits into the larger context — and where the landmines are.

BD: A lot of times you’re dealing with people who don’t quite understand what a writer needs. THey want to be helpful, but you need to know the questions. Know clearly in your own mind what information you need to get out of people. It can be frustrating, too. You have to be aware that sometimes what you’re doing is helping people think through what they want and put it down in writing. The rubber meets the road when you start writing about something. There’s an element of the process that you’re helping the organization along to some point, and you have to be patient. There’s a lot of writing by committee, and the process is different. Know that going in.

(one of the panelist’s cell phones is ringing. Whoops!)

BD: THere’s a tremendous opprotunity for freelancers who approach this kind of writing with creativity and seriousness. I see a lot of schlocky writing, people who don’t do the research and just kind of phone it in. If you really DO it, you’re going to stand out. To the extent that you’re willign to dig in and see this asa process with people and bring enthusiasm, there’s a tremendous opportunity to really stand out from the crowd.

BD: It’s an awful lot of fun to come into a process that’s a team process. It’s not feature writing. It’s like opinion writing, but it’s not your opinion — you’re channeling the organization’s message. If you really ARE an opinion writer, if you can’t get out of your own head, this is a kind of frustrating field for you. You need to channel their intensity. It’s fun because usually you’re the only person on the team who has the ability to write. You’re the one who knows how to marry programming, etc, into persuasive prose, so your role on the team is clear and your ablity to help the organization is huge.

BD: I believe that people don’t give huge gifts based on writtenmaterials, but you can LOSE a huge gift based on poor or sloppy or unenthusiastic materials and can really undermine the organization over time. And when the checks come in, you get to feel really good about it. With magazine writing, there’s not really that sort of payoff.

CA: GOod wirting is a precious commodity in the nonprofit world, and grant funding is so much the lifeblood of nonprofits taht they are willing to outsource the job to make sure it’s done right. Foundation grant writing is continuous, unlike capital campaigns that only come along like very two years. There’s a relentless pressure to get grants out the door for foundations. In this corner of the market is money and power, but no fame because it’s completely anonymous and only about a dozen people will read what you’re writing anyway.

CA: 5 things you probably don’t know and 4 tips for succeeding.

Little knowns…

2. Relentless pressure of foundation deadlines means that the foundation relations team are the first to hire freelancers to fill staff vacancies.
3. Some nonprofits get a lot more foundaiton money than others. If a nonprof has dues-paying members rather than institutional members, they are likely gettigna lot of revenue from that source. People represent a lot of money. Nat. Conserv. is a good example, whereas Brookings Institution is 60-80% foundation money.
4. Even when all positions are filled in foundations relations staff, still a good market because the writing is difficult, the team is overworked, and senior management will do whatever it takes to keep them happy which often means agreeing to outside help.
5. There is no such thing as proposal writing — proposals and writing. The kind of work you’d be doing is less writing and more recycling. Reporting on grants that have been won OR securing the grant in the first place. Reall, you’re ediitng the first draft by the people who wrote the report or updating an old proposal. Bottom line: Collaboration between you and the staff — they provide the substance, you provide the style. If you’re doing the first draft, it’s because you got the assignment from someone who doesnt’ know what they’re doing.
6. Thre’s no secret, but some things worth noting: (a) tell a good and compelling story, (b) exactly what you’ll do to make the world better, (c) undersand diff between activity, objective, and outcome, (d) at the end of the day, it’s al about demonstrating impact of investments.

Tips

2. You can find out who has staff shortages by going to Chronicle of Phil. job board and the Assoc of Fund Profs (afpnet.org) to get daily e-mails alerting you to staff vacancies based on keywords like “grant writers” and “foundation relations” and send a LOI to Dir. of Dev. or Dir. of Found. Relat.
3. READ: Joel Fleischman’s The Foundation: A Great American Secret to make you conversant enough to write a convincing cover letter offering your services if you’re new. Impres upon them that ou get the needs in #5 above and that you understand the collaboration (#4) Above.
4. When you get the job, be fearless as an editor. The people you’re collaborating with are no more likely to write well than the general population and will be generally grateful for your help as they see their jargony and sometimes incoherent draft become compelling prose and start to see dollar signs. “Look, you’re a policy wonk in need of a journalist” and go to town on the draft without hurting feelings. Clear distinction between substance and style.
5. How to charge: Fan of pricing by the hour (versus project) because small grants can often be just as much work as the big ones. Your monthly invoice will be easy for the client to relate to if you assign a certain number of hours to a certain project.

ML: Ben Johnson described himself as an elegant hack, and that’s what a proposal writer is. Fundraising is alwasy being written in someone else’s voice, some more sympathetic to your own vocie than others. you must find those sympathetic voices to be able to write with authenticity. You must be simpatico with what you’re writing about. if you don’t care about the environment, don’t write for the Nature Conservancy. If you’re passionate about trafficking in women, find and organization that deal with that and your passion will help you.

ML: An elegant hack is the most valuable person an organization can have. The written word is what makes the world flow in nonprofit life. The alchemy of nonprofits begins wiht spoken words and dieas and then takes a written form. it’s the communication of the written form that produces money in the end. it’s almost like creating money out of whole cloth. it’s the closest thing I know to alchemy.

ML: You make it happen. you are a HANDMAIDEN to making it happen. THere’s nothing more astonishing than a world-class reseacher who speaks to you in langage that makes no sense whatsoever. An youre’ going to make it make sense ad make it compelling for the audience. you mist know who the audience is and part of the writer’s obligation isto be the reader’s ear. you have to hear what you’re writing and you ahve to ahve enough imagination to know what is is your readers need to nkow. You’re writing for a very few, very specific readers, and each of them speaks a different language. You become the prism, the intermediary who can take the language of one and make it the language of another.

ML: What you are writing over here in this nonprofit which answers those wuestions in the organization also must be aware of the conditions of the RECIPIENT of the proposal. What are they hearing? you’re engaged in a dialogue at all times. This is a dialogue among a very few people. And by and large, they know each other. By and large, the researcher whose work youa re working withi sknown to the foundation where you are submitting the proposal, etc. They both know each other but what the reasearch writes will not be a proposal and wll not be cceptable to the same people,who fund the researcher because they know him.

ML: youre’ a midwife. And you write differentl for the different places. You have to know the agency as well as the researcher knows the agency. Know the person and listen to them. You can alwasy go on the phone and listen to them. this is a world where words are money, so words are exchanced all the time.

ML: There are some things about writing porposals that are contrary to writing in other worlds. A proposal starts at the end, what ouw ant to get done in the ftuure, not what happened in the apst aht made this happen. You want the imagination. What is it hat you’re offering? youa re alwasys offering entry to a new world, and the new world is exdtly the world that the funding agency wanted to get into — not the world that the angecy you’re working for wants to do, but the FUNDING agency. The amterial you use to convince them with comes out of your own organization, but your imagination is theirs. And THEN you have to describe a project with the appearance of reasonableness. SOmebody has to lok at it and say, that’s the way it could work.

ML: And it’s veyr hard to take a researcher through the process. They’re very impatient as you say carefull, what are you going to do next? what’s the first thing that you’re oging to do? enver mind that you’re going to redo the world. HOW are you going to redo the world? you have to take the person throgh that proces step by step so ou can write it and create a plan that has a semblance of reasonablenes — and it must be reasonable ot you to be reasonable to the reader. Authenticity comes through.

ML: Its’ easy to write workmanlike proposals. it’s ahrd to write PASSIONATE workmanlike propoals. Techniques for writing controlled passion:

2. Never use -ing words.
3. Nix short, declarative sentences. Use statements with subordinate clauses, which reveal deep thought because associated with conditionality ad thinking things through. Reader needs both signposts, and it needs to feel thoughtful. Balance the two like music in a paragraph. Read it aloud because that wll tell you whether you have music.
4. Be colorful but not too colorful. bea ble to describe somehting in a way, a phrase, that someone will remember that isn’t a cliche and at the same time is not so original that the researcher is going to spend the next three days asking you why you said that. Find delicate ground. Can lead your researchesr to say interesting things; take them down and repeat them

ML: At the end the prop is as much about you, and the reasearcher and the organization yu’re wriitng from as the organization you’rewriitng too. If ou’ve done it successflly — and success is a very low percentage in terms of thegging the money — you’ve got a piece of art that’s a peculiar piece of artthat only you and a small group of oher poeple will see that answer a set of conditions that are contradictory every step of the way.

(time for audience questions) (they’re either basic or REALLY specific to individuals, so I think I’m done.) (just kidding, someone’s asking about rates.)

CA: FWIW, if I were suddenly on the other side of hte table, my rule of thumb in targeting a nonprofit with a budget of under $10M/year, I would probably try to get a little more than $100/hour but I woldn’t have high hopes of success. If the budget is biger, I’d ask $150/hour for services. If I were trying to get moeny from the likes of a Harvard, I might even go higher.

ML: I usually base it on the size of the orgnization. In the district, there are a lot of nonprofits at under $5M.year, but many where $100/hour will still stand, and anywhere you should get $75/hour at least. (ML prefers project versus hourly.) Face to face contact makes the process move faster and improves understanding.

BD: You have to be a darn good interviewer to get the same information from people through e-mail and the phone taht you would siting across the table with them. It’s harder to bond.

CA: Recycling, tweaing, adn updating work, all that matters si that you have some feel from the organizaiton os it’s not too abstract. Once that’s taken care of, all you need is the Internet.

ML: Idealist.org also posts job offers.

Tags: freelance writing blog, freelance writing, freelance, writing, washington independent writers, WIW, nonprofit writing, proposal writing, grant writing, foundation writing, joseph barbato, beth duris, chuck anderson, marjorie lightman, inkthinker, kristen king

Contents Copyright © 2006-2014 Kristen King

www.inkthinkerblog.com — I’ll be blogging my notes for the WIW 2008 Annual Conference and posting them between sessions throughout the day. I’ll be fixing typos later! (These people talk fast, so this is FULL of typos.)

Moderator
Joseph Barbato, Barbato Associates

Panelists
Beth Duris, Trout Magazine
Chuck Anderson, National Parks Conservation association
Marjorie Lightman, QED Associates, LLC

(Note to self: Stop being so darn helpful and mising the begining of sessions.)

JB: Find out who needs fundraising writing? Who’s running a capital campaign? You can go to various sources like the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Websites, professional organizations (Assoc. of Fundraisng Profs — can join as a writer), find and meet the people running development offices around town and learn early on who’s planning what. Any writer with strong writing skills can do this kind of material. It’s the difference between writing about Harvard for New York Magazine and writing a brochure FOR Harvard. Different tone, different angle. Bring a lot of patience to the table — you’ll be writing smeone who may or may not have a very good editorial sense.

(There is a guy in front of me playing solitaire on his laptop. Dude, what is WRONG with you?)

JB: You must always look for a deep pocket. The storefront agency might well ask you to write for little or nothing. If you’re in a position to do that, do it. But places like Harvard University are used to paying market rates for everything they buy, including writing. Some places will start playing the charity card immediately, and I would recommend that you avoid those places like the plague. Some agencies devote a certain amount of time to pro bono work, and that is a favor those agencies are doing for the organizations. If they want YOU to do the work, you should expect them to pay a competitive price and you should meet their schedule.

(apparently everyone’s speaking their say and then it moves down the line, so no back and forth right now)

JB: Each year, the Chronicle of Philanthropy rates the top 100 nonprofits. Safe bet, those are well-run organziations used to paying the coin of the realm for the things they do, and chances are that they’re willing to pay for what they want you to do.

BD: Previous staff writer at Nature Consevancy, currently editor of Trout Unlimited’s magazine, and freelance conservation development work. First of all, there’s a huge range of nonprofits that you might potentially be working with as clients. The Nature Conservancy is much, much bigger than any other conservancy organization out there, and Trout is very small. In a smaller place, tehre’s a different level of expectation and sophistication for the writer there. In bigger places, you spend a lot of time talkign to all of these experts and listening to their point of view and trying to really synthesize that.

BD: You come in with a fresh persoective to help them get away from their corporate point of view and combine individual perspectives into something will resonate with an outside person. The bigger an organization is, the more bureaucratic it is. As an outside person, that’s something you can really offer them: You’re not drinking the Kool Aid every day. You’re the one who’s thinking about the reader’s point of view, someone who ust wants to be interested and inspired. You’re not steeped in the jargon.

BD: you have to realize when you’re hearing them, that’s just too much information. You’re coming in as an expert, so you have some leverage there and you need to exercise it because that’s part of what they’re paying for. In a big group, it’s a lot of saving them from themselves. In a smaller group, it’s an opportunit to direct them and help them understand what they need. You can come in wiht a little bit of knowledge and look real smart. You are there kind of tyring to educate them and give them ideas and helping them to see themselves in a larger context.

BD: For instance, when you get really into wriitng about an organization’s campaign, it may be more or less well developed internally. It’s up to you as a writer to help an organiztion flesh out the oportunites and initiative in a way that will be compelling, figure out the context in which they’re working, and convey that as well. What really is so special about this? You have to challenge people to say, let’s get down to brass tacks here. How does this compare? You need to spend itme up front before you start writing knowing all the information you can about hw this initiative fits into the larger context — and where the landmines are.

BD: A lot of times you’re dealing with people who don’t quite understand what a writer needs. THey want to be helpful, but you need to know the questions. Know clearly in your own mind what information you need to get out of people. It can be frustrating, too. You have to be aware that sometimes what you’re doing is helping people think through what they want and put it down in writing. The rubber meets the road when you start writing about something. There’s an element of the process that you’re helping the organization along to some point, and you have to be patient. There’s a lot of writing by committee, and the process is different. Know that going in.

(one of the panelist’s cell phones is ringing. Whoops!)

BD: THere’s a tremendous opprotunity for freelancers who approach this kind of writing with creativity and seriousness. I see a lot of schlocky writing, people who don’t do the research and just kind of phone it in. If you really DO it, you’re going to stand out. To the extent that you’re willign to dig in and see this asa process with people and bring enthusiasm, there’s a tremendous opportunity to really stand out from the crowd.

BD: It’s an awful lot of fun to come into a process that’s a team process. It’s not feature writing. It’s like opinion writing, but it’s not your opinion — you’re channeling the organization’s message. If you really ARE an opinion writer, if you can’t get out of your own head, this is a kind of frustrating field for you. You need to channel their intensity. It’s fun because usually you’re the only person on the team who has the ability to write. You’re the one who knows how to marry programming, etc, into persuasive prose, so your role on the team is clear and your ablity to help the organization is huge.

BD: I believe that people don’t give huge gifts based on writtenmaterials, but you can LOSE a huge gift based on poor or sloppy or unenthusiastic materials and can really undermine the organization over time. And when the checks come in, you get to feel really good about it. With magazine writing, there’s not really that sort of payoff.

CA: GOod wirting is a precious commodity in the nonprofit world, and grant funding is so much the lifeblood of nonprofits taht they are willing to outsource the job to make sure it’s done right. Foundation grant writing is continuous, unlike capital campaigns that only come along like very two years. There’s a relentless pressure to get grants out the door for foundations. In this corner of the market is money and power, but no fame because it’s completely anonymous and only about a dozen people will read what you’re writing anyway.

CA: 5 things you probably don’t know and 4 tips for succeeding.

Little knowns…

1. Relentless pressure of foundation deadlines means that the foundation relations team are the first to hire freelancers to fill staff vacancies.
2. Some nonprofits get a lot more foundaiton money than others. If a nonprof has dues-paying members rather than institutional members, they are likely gettigna lot of revenue from that source. People represent a lot of money. Nat. Conserv. is a good example, whereas Brookings Institution is 60-80% foundation money.
3. Even when all positions are filled in foundations relations staff, still a good market because the writing is difficult, the team is overworked, and senior management will do whatever it takes to keep them happy which often means agreeing to outside help.
4. There is no such thing as proposal writing — proposals and writing. The kind of work you’d be doing is less writing and more recycling. Reporting on grants that have been won OR securing the grant in the first place. Reall, you’re ediitng the first draft by the people who wrote the report or updating an old proposal. Bottom line: Collaboration between you and the staff — they provide the substance, you provide the style. If you’re doing the first draft, it’s because you got the assignment from someone who doesnt’ know what they’re doing.
5. Thre’s no secret, but some things worth noting: (a) tell a good and compelling story, (b) exactly what you’ll do to make the world better, (c) undersand diff between activity, objective, and outcome, (d) at the end of the day, it’s al about demonstrating impact of investments.

Tips

1. You can find out who has staff shortages by going to Chronicle of Phil. job board and the Assoc of Fund Profs (afpnet.org) to get daily e-mails alerting you to staff vacancies based on keywords like “grant writers” and “foundation relations” and send a LOI to Dir. of Dev. or Dir. of Found. Relat.
2. READ: Joel Fleischman’s The Foundation: A Great American Secret to make you conversant enough to write a convincing cover letter offering your services if you’re new. Impres upon them that ou get the needs in #5 above and that you understand the collaboration (#4) Above.
3. When you get the job, be fearless as an editor. The people you’re collaborating with are no more likely to write well than the general population and will be generally grateful for your help as they see their jargony and sometimes incoherent draft become compelling prose and start to see dollar signs. “Look, you’re a policy wonk in need of a journalist” and go to town on the draft without hurting feelings. Clear distinction between substance and style.
4. How to charge: Fan of pricing by the hour (versus project) because small grants can often be just as much work as the big ones. Your monthly invoice will be easy for the client to relate to if you assign a certain number of hours to a certain project.

ML: Ben Johnson described himself as an elegant hack, and that’s what a proposal writer is. Fundraising is alwasy being written in someone else’s voice, some more sympathetic to your own vocie than others. you must find those sympathetic voices to be able to write with authenticity. You must be simpatico with what you’re writing about. if you don’t care about the environment, don’t write for the Nature Conservancy. If you’re passionate about trafficking in women, find and organization that deal with that and your passion will help you.

ML: An elegant hack is the most valuable person an organization can have. The written word is what makes the world flow in nonprofit life. The alchemy of nonprofits begins wiht spoken words and dieas and then takes a written form. it’s the communication of the written form that produces money in the end. it’s almost like creating money out of whole cloth. it’s the closest thing I know to alchemy.

ML: You make it happen. you are a HANDMAIDEN to making it happen. THere’s nothing more astonishing than a world-class reseacher who speaks to you in langage that makes no sense whatsoever. An youre’ going to make it make sense ad make it compelling for the audience. you mist know who the audience is and part of the writer’s obligation isto be the reader’s ear. you have to hear what you’re writing and you ahve to ahve enough imagination to know what is is your readers need to nkow. You’re writing for a very few, very specific readers, and each of them speaks a different language. You become the prism, the intermediary who can take the language of one and make it the language of another.

ML: What you are writing over here in this nonprofit which answers those wuestions in the organization also must be aware of the conditions of the RECIPIENT of the proposal. What are they hearing? you’re engaged in a dialogue at all times. This is a dialogue among a very few people. And by and large, they know each other. By and large, the researcher whose work youa re working withi sknown to the foundation where you are submitting the proposal, etc. They both know each other but what the reasearch writes will not be a proposal and wll not be cceptable to the same people,who fund the researcher because they know him.

ML: youre’ a midwife. And you write differentl for the different places. You have to know the agency as well as the researcher knows the agency. Know the person and listen to them. You can alwasy go on the phone and listen to them. this is a world where words are money, so words are exchanced all the time.

ML: There are some things about writing porposals that are contrary to writing in other worlds. A proposal starts at the end, what ouw ant to get done in the ftuure, not what happened in the apst aht made this happen. You want the imagination. What is it hat you’re offering? youa re alwasys offering entry to a new world, and the new world is exdtly the world that the funding agency wanted to get into — not the world that the angecy you’re working for wants to do, but the FUNDING agency. The amterial you use to convince them with comes out of your own organization, but your imagination is theirs. And THEN you have to describe a project with the appearance of reasonableness. SOmebody has to lok at it and say, that’s the way it could work.

ML: And it’s veyr hard to take a researcher through the process. They’re very impatient as you say carefull, what are you going to do next? what’s the first thing that you’re oging to do? enver mind that you’re going to redo the world. HOW are you going to redo the world? you have to take the person throgh that proces step by step so ou can write it and create a plan that has a semblance of reasonablenes — and it must be reasonable ot you to be reasonable to the reader. Authenticity comes through.

ML: Its’ easy to write workmanlike proposals. it’s ahrd to write PASSIONATE workmanlike propoals. Techniques for writing controlled passion:

1. Never use -ing words.
2. Nix short, declarative sentences. Use statements with subordinate clauses, which reveal deep thought because associated with conditionality ad thinking things through. Reader needs both signposts, and it needs to feel thoughtful. Balance the two like music in a paragraph. Read it aloud because that wll tell you whether you have music.
3. Be colorful but not too colorful. bea ble to describe somehting in a way, a phrase, that someone will remember that isn’t a cliche and at the same time is not so original that the researcher is going to spend the next three days asking you why you said that. Find delicate ground. Can lead your researchesr to say interesting things; take them down and repeat them

ML: At the end the prop is as much about you, and the reasearcher and the organization yu’re wriitng from as the organization you’rewriitng too. If ou’ve done it successflly — and success is a very low percentage in terms of thegging the money — you’ve got a piece of art that’s a peculiar piece of artthat only you and a small group of oher poeple will see that answer a set of conditions that are contradictory every step of the way.

(time for audience questions) (they’re either basic or REALLY specific to individuals, so I think I’m done.) (just kidding, someone’s asking about rates.)

CA: FWIW, if I were suddenly on the other side of hte table, my rule of thumb in targeting a nonprofit with a budget of under $10M/year, I would probably try to get a little more than $100/hour but I woldn’t have high hopes of success. If the budget is biger, I’d ask $150/hour for services. If I were trying to get moeny from the likes of a Harvard, I might even go higher.

ML: I usually base it on the size of the orgnization. In the district, there are a lot of nonprofits at under $5M.year, but many where $100/hour will still stand, and anywhere you should get $75/hour at least. (ML prefers project versus hourly.) Face to face contact makes the process move faster and improves understanding.

BD: You have to be a darn good interviewer to get the same information from people through e-mail and the phone taht you would siting across the table with them. It’s harder to bond.

CA: Recycling, tweaing, adn updating work, all that matters si that you have some feel from the organizaiton os it’s not too abstract. Once that’s taken care of, all you need is the Internet.

ML: Idealist.org also posts job offers.

Tags: freelance writing blog, freelance writing, freelance, writing, washington independent writers, WIW, nonprofit writing, proposal writing, grant writing, foundation writing, joseph barbato, beth duris, chuck anderson, marjorie lightman, inkthinker, kristen king

Contents Copyright © 2006-2014 Kristen King

www.inkthinkerblog.com — I’ll be blogging my notes for the WIW 2008 Annual Conference and posting them between sessions throughout the day. I’ll be fixing typos later!

Moderator:
Howard Yoon, Gail Ross Literary Agency

Panelists:
Diana Finch, Diana Finch Literary Agency (formerly Ellen Levine Literary Agency)
Lisa Haven, Paraview Literary Agency
Regina Ryan, Regina Ryan Publishing Enterprises

Good times, the moderator for the Nonfication Agents Roundtable session isn’t here, so the agents are self-moderating and introducing themselves down the line.

Regina Ryan likes helpful and surprsing books and covers a WIDE range of topics. Lisa Hagan got started in documentaries and then fell in love with being a mansucript agent. Diana Finch brought some of her current titles:

• Lipstick Jihad, journalist memoir
• Stalin’s Children, journalist memoir
• Three Cups of Tea, on the bestseller list currently(sold in 15 foreign countries)
• What to Say to a Porcupine, business fables

DF: When you’re writing nonfiction, what goes into deciding what to write. Nonfiction, you and your agent work with a proposal, and rarely does a nonfiction writer write the whole manuscript. Editors prefer that they NOT do that because they want to have input in shaping the book.

LH: Most of her editors want outline, synopsis, 2 chapters, author bio, marketing plan, platform, competition. Michael Larsen’s book is the best one.

DF: once you have an idea for a book, be aware of what’s out there on that topic. If there’s another book that’s very similar, often yours will not be viable.

RR; What you want to say is what’s out there and why your book is different and better. Draw sharp comparisons. Don’t knock it or be negative, but be specific.

DF: It isn’t always the case that others are competing but ratehr than there may be a sequence of books and yours would be the next step. Competitive books are books that are still selling. Sometimes you have to talk about a book that’s 10, 20 years older if it’s very significant.

RR: Part of your job in becoing professionals is doing your research. I coach. Writing a proposal is an art form. When i get a hold of it, I can see where it needs to be tweaked. Sometimes authors will say, “Well there’s NEVER been a book on this subject.” That’s a little scary, because tehre must be a reason. When I work with an author, I will guide them on stuff like that. But you have to get the basics.

RR: Your platform is how you reach the public. Ideally, it’s once a month on the Today Show. Twice a month. Every day is ideal. Public speaking, getting known, Internet, how many hits you get to your website. Publishers want you to deliver that audience in an easy way. Who’s your list, who will promote for you, internet publicit and promotions.

DF: All of my nonfiction authors have a website. It’s better if it’s very simple. You can develop it by lnking to other sites in your area, blog for other sites, affiliate with different organizations in your area, build a subscriber list. Post important new news, e-mail newsletters.

RR: Penny Sansaveri who specializes in internet publicity: Red Hot Internet Publicity. She says the best way to get known is to comment nicely on other people’s blogs. You get known in the community, show people you have something nice to say.

DF: Even if you have a finished manuscript, you should create a proposal to show where your book fits into the market. It’s really meant for the editors to convince them to publish the book itself.

RR: It’s a selling document. What you’re really doing is giving the editor a script so that editor can present the book to the salespeople and everyone else without hype.

DF: A problem that coems up with writing the sample chapter. You have to choose one that will be representative enough, but that won’t require so much research that you would need an advance for doing it. Some people will sell an article and then expand the article into a chapter so then you’re getting paid for the article.

RR: You have to do an annotated chapter outline. And that isn’t a summary, by the way. You need to do it in a way that piques interest. Your annotated outline should give the sense of that chapter as a building block in the course of the development of that book.

DF: If there’s research that you haven’t done, part of the proposal might be your research plan: what sources you would go to and how you propose to reach them, what methods you will use and how long it will take, etc. I do conceptual editing.

LH: You go with the flow. Every editor wants to put their thumbprint on the project. I tell writers not to be married to anything because it’s going to get changed. But don’t approach an agent without a proposal.

DF: We want to see the best you can do on your own. Our expectation from a query is that you have the proposal ready to go.

DF: It used to be that you didn’t need to have a platform. But now, look at the NYT bestseller list. Everyone on that list is nationally known, national TV publicity, etc. I would bet that currently every single person on the list has had that kind of national exposure.

RR: the other reason this platform business has become so important is the huge bookstores, the B&N and stuff, and they are just deluged with titles. Chances are, they will go with someone they know, someone who’s been on Oprah or the Today Show thing. Stand out.

LH: A lot of midmarket books don’t get on the bestseller lists, but they stay on the bookstore shelves. They’re the backlist. You want to have your book making money every six months.

(A lot of people are asking really basic questions. People, this is NOT the place for “what’s a book proposal?” or “what’s copyright?” Get a clue. If anyone asks the difference between self-publishing and commercial publishing, I’m going to scream.)

DF: In memoir, the quality of writing is very important. We’ve probably seen 5 to 10 proposals for similar stories. Also improtant is the way you’ve focused it into a book, the way you’ve found a narrative for it, made it a story. You have to come up with a shape for the story and a way of making whatever the experience is singular. You have to have some kind of focus on it.

RR: It also helps if you have a really good angle on it. it’s hard to publish memoirs now unles they’re really striking.

DF: NYT column Modern Love has generated an amazing proportion of memoirs. Look at that every week ands ee what it is that the writers are homing in on. Also back page in NYT magazine.

RR: The first thing I do is look at the writing. I skip right to that and then I back up and see what it’s all about, the proposal and the overview and all that. But I want to see the writing.

LH: I heard David Sedaris the other day on NPR saying that only 10% of his story is fiction — because who doesn’t embellish — but it’s being classified as fiction.

RR: Quality of writing is voice, the way you speak, the quality of the descriptions — how they all add up.

LH: Sometimes writers are married to their idea and don’t want to change anything, so they go on their merry way.

DF: One thing editors are looking for now is narrative. It has to be told as a story. Journalistic technique.

DF: Some university press doesn’t offer any advance at all, but the larger ones may pay advances as high as the smaller publishers. It could be $10-20K if they’re competing with publishers in New York.

RR: University pblishers are kind of stepping into the gap and publishing books that they never used to publish before. U of Nebraska is now the 2nd largest U press.

DF: I don’t have a problem with multiple submission to agents if they let me know.

RR: I just don’t want to spend my time on somthing and then the writer say, oh, I got an agent.

DF: You want to choose the best, not just the first or fastest. If more than one agent is insterested, that is wonderful. You should talk withe ach of them, let them see the book, get a sense of how you work.

LH: A good author-agent match, you have to like each toher. Jeff Hermann said, “If you dread a client’s phone call, you need to drop that client.”

RR: it’s like a marriage. You want to stay out of your agent’s life-is-too-short department.

LH: I prefer a query letter via the internet and ask me if this is something to see. Then I want the proposal as an e-mail attachment.

RR: I have guidelines if anyone’s interested.

DF: A query letter is very important. Usually that’s what you should approach someone with initially. it should describe the project, why you’re writing the book and what your motivation is, and your biography as to where it’s relevant to your writing the book.

RR: What’s very effective is WHY you’re writing the book and why you’re willing to devote a few years of your life to this.

LH: Appropriate length for nonfiction book is 70K-80K words. My last few have been 76K.

DF: 60K is too short and less than 60K probably isn’t a full length book. Over 100K is a lot, too much.

RR: You have to be really careful about length so you don’t price yourself out of the market.

LH: I did a book not too long ago called Never Throw Rice at a Pisces, an astrology related wedding guide. They put it in astrology not wedding, so it’s a dead book. Focus your genre and be specfic.

RR: Parenting books are hard because there are so many out there. Publishers just aren’t looking for parenting books. You have to really Push them.

DF: Editors also tend to publish parenting books related to where they are in their life. Editors in their 30s are more for younger children, and the ones in their 50s would go for teenagers. ADHD treatments are hot now. There was a time before where it was focused on girls, but now it’s more focused on boys because it’s believed that girls now have it easier.

RR: One of my authors did just use a pseudonym. She had a really unusual name, and she didn’t want her family to know she had written the book. But it wasn’t a memoir or anything and I can’t imaging you would want to do that. It just complicates things.

DF: An agent doesn’t take on a project unless you anticipate you’re going to sell it. There are reasons books don’t sell, and it could be that someone else is working on something similar and you don’t know it until your launch.

RR: And the market changes.

LH: We just take a commission on the advance and the royalties. No upfront money should be paid.

DF: Another reason a book might not sell is that the publishers have published similar books that just didn’t do well.

LH: If you’re employed full time and write [your] for your[company’s] target market, there is no conflict of interest. I would say you have a built-in market.

DF: The only problem would be if you’re writing it on the job, or maybe if you’re a newspaper reporter.

RR: People complain about university presses publishing midlist books, but I wouldn’t say it impinges on my life at all.

DF: For a lot of big houses, if they don’t think they can sell 20K, 25K, 30K copies, that’s often their line.

LH: But some of those big houses publish books that only sell 5K copies and they just sit there.

RR: There’s no way to know. Sometimes a book starts out small and becomes huge.

LH: [[follow-up with her about the author with the big personality who landed a $15K advance and got $1.3M for his first royalty check]]

LH: I decide that I’m going to take a client on before. I do consulting, but not everyone does.

LH: Contract written up by lawyer for the lifetime of the book.

RR: I like to do future books, too, because I have long-term relaitonships.

DF: I often work without an agreement unless the writer asks for one and then the clause about commission, etc, goes in the publishr contract. Also an instruction to the publisher as to how the money is going to be paid out. AAR (Association of Author Representatives) has a code of ethics that lays out requirements. The agent only represents you as far as you say the agent represents you.

RR: I have tried that approach and I don’t like it. I like to be clear and spell everything out. I want to author to understand that they’re getting into a long-term committment. I’m putting a tremendous amount of works into this.

DF: Foreign rights are part of the negotiation wiht the publisher. Sometimes the pub wants to handle the foreign rights, and in that case they might pay a higher advance than if they were planning to publish it only in the US or only in English. If you think your book has an appeal overseas, then you should consider than when selecting an agent.

RR: I use an agency called [[books overseas???]] that’s like having my own foreign rights department.

DF: A few agents deal directly with foreign publishers, but only a few, because it’s complicated.

RR: If they can’t sell the book, you can go to someone else but you need to let your agent know and cancel the agreement.

DF: But you need to think about it, because the new agent would probably go to the same publishers, so you may need to think about the BOOK.

RR: And if someone comes to me from another agent, I would want to know who else saw it first.

LH: When I’m contacting someone, I say I love this book nd I have to represent you.

RR: Narrative nonfiction is the biggest trend.

DF: More trends are holding on more so than emerging. And memoir. It’s hard to sell new memoirs because there are so many published, but they’re very popular. One of the books that started narrative nonfiction is A Perfect Storm. It became a movie because it had such a strong story.

LH: When I’m reading a proposal, I go,, “Oh, gosh, Ellen would love this” or whoever, because when you’ve been doing this a while you know the editors and you’re friends. I’m making notes the whole time I’m reading it and I start querying as soon as the agrement is signed (once the proposal is ready).

RR: Pets are good.

LH: I do a lot of pet books and they do very well and stay on the shelves a long time.

Tags: freelance writing blog, freelance writing, freelance, writing, nonfiction, literary agent, trends in nonfiction, publishing, industry trends, agent advice, howard yoon, diana finch, lisa haven, regina ryan, gail ross literary agency, diana finch literary agency, paraview literary agency, regina ryan publishing enterprises, inkthinker, kristen king

Contents Copyright © 2006-2014 Kristen King