Member-only story

You Need to Know What You Are Worth

Melissa Firman
3 min readJan 31, 2020

--

In business and in life, don’t give away your hard-earned reputation and integrity for pennies.

Smiling woman with brown/blond hair. She is leaning over a pile of money. On the right is a graph and colorful bars.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

My phone buzzed with a text from an acquaintance.

Hey, you do grant writing, right?

Yes.

My friend continued texting. The nonprofit she manages was looking into hiring a freelance grant writer but based on the quote received, the prices seemed excessive. Would I take a look at it to see if her quote seemed in line with what grant writers typically charge?

Sure.

She forwarded it, along with the name of the grant writer. Because I live and work in a city where everyone is a decimal point of separation from everyone else, this grant writer is someone I know — albeit tangentially. They have been in the business awhile and they have a good reputation. I told my friend this, adding that I wasn’t familiar with the person’s work quality so I couldn’t speak to that.

And then I looked at their proposal. In my professional opinion, it seemed reasonable.

When I confirmed this to my friend, she admitted she was shocked.

We’re just a struggling nonprofit —

--

--

Melissa Firman
Melissa Firman

Written by Melissa Firman

Writes about books, GenX, politics, life. Currently working on a memoir. www.melissafirman.com

No responses yet