Expecting Free Guidance Is a Bad Start

I co-founded a nonprofit last year to elevate women in the workplace. We are fortunate to have assembled a world-class advisory board, strategic partners, and initiatives to eliminate harassment and improve women’s standing through data, dialogue and training. I have been invited to speak at universities, at conferences and also to companies. Interestingly enough, many of the male leaders never offer to pay me for my time but reach out for advice. For the first year, I spent thousands of dollars and lots of time taking meetings and sharing insights because I was passionate about the mission. But now I don’t bother working with them or attending their conferences unless they’re willing to pay; it’s just another way of devaluing women’s work. I feel if you’re committed to these issues, you need to invest in them and those who have dedicated their time and labor to developing expertise. So many women who need to get their voice and platform out are willing to speak for free, and I just won’t do it anymore. What’s the balance? — San Francisco

So you founded an organization to combat the gender pay gap (and many other issues), and now men want you to do their work without pay? Let’s all pause here to take a deep existential sigh.

O.K., then. The entire reason organizations like yours are necessary is that the vast majority of men at the top have no tools for elevating women in their workplaces — nothing past a vague understanding that “elevating women” is important if you don’t want to be sued or become the subject of a Twitter meme. So here you come along, a woman with experience and knowledge in exactly the thing they suck at , and they still don’t think critically enough to realize that an inquiry about “picking your brain” or hosting you for an unpaid speech to their all-white, all-male board is a problem.

I am not a hard-liner on the “should I ever work for free” question. I have given plenty of talks without compensation, including when I was a broke freelancer, when I genuinely believed I would get something else out of the experience. I offer free coaching sessions to other women in the field, and spend 10 full days every summer volunteering at a journalism camp for low-income high schoolers. This is a lot of unpaid labor! The right balance for you can be discovered only with some trial and error, but you could do worse than to start from the mind-set that helping people with fewer resources and opportunities than you have is pro bono work, while helping those with more is how you pay the bills. I fail to see any reason that highly profitable companies shouldn’t pay for your labor, and I encourage you to respond to such requests, unapologetically, with your rates for consulting, speaking, etc. Make those rates clear on your organization’s website, too, so they have no excuse not to have seen them.

Some of these companies will willingly pony up, ideally feeling a little sheepish that they didn’t ask initially. Others will find someone to take your spot for free. Most likely, she will be someone with less experience and training, which means at some point in her career she’ll get fed up, too. One more idea to help her along: Add a paragraph to the site explaining directly (if slightly more diplomatically) why asking women for free consulting on the gender-diversity front is such a colossally stupid idea.