Freelancers: The Freelance Committee needs your help
In order to help freelancers navigate the labyrinth of contracts and legalese — and increase their chance of negotiating reasonable and fair terms — the Freelance Committee is undertaking the task of building a reference contracts database. Members helping with this effort are: Jennie Dusheck, Jill Adams, Jennifer Wettlaufer, Ricki Lewis and DeLene Beeland. Ideally this database will be available to NASW members only, will be searchable by key terms, will contain a glossary, and will be chock full of useful contracts and clauses — both good and bad, so we can learn from each other's successes and trials.
To help out, please submit your relevant writing contracts or clauses from the last three years.
Before sending them, please note the following:
Ideally, send word processing document files (Word, Pages or text); but we would rather have PDFs than no contract.
If you need to redact sensitive information, we understand. The more you leave in, however, the more useful the database will be to others. You can contact Jennie Dusheck at dusheck@gmail.com to work with you on an approach that feels comfortable. We expect you to leave out your name, but hope you can include the name of the client.
At the top of your submission, please list a few things that will help us out (and in this order would be even better!):
Year the contract was offered/signed.
What type of client the contract is for (newspaper, magazine, book, NGO, research institution, pharma company, etc.).
What type of rights were sold (First North American rights, all rights, work made for hire, etc).
Length of time it took to negotiate the contract.
Clauses you negotiated.
Before and after versions if you negotiated a clause.
Please send your submissions to DeLene Beeland at delene@nasw.org.
Thank you!
Freelance Committee: Contracts database subcommittee
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