How to work with freelancers and consultants
From Our Toolkit
Freelancers and consultants undertake a wide range of work for the heritage, museum and archive sectors from collection documentation, delivering training, writing strategy documents, to mentoring, fundraising, visitor research and consultation.
The term freelancers and consultant are often used interchangeably, and this can lead to confusion. This definition is useful to keep in mind when thinking about what you want delivered.
A freelancer can be defined as someone who “is not employed by one organisation, but is paid for each piece of work they do by the organisation they do it for” and a consultant is “a person who gives expert advice to a person or organisation on a particular subject”
SHARE Working with freelancers
Before you employ a freelancer or consultant it is useful to think about whether it is a freelance opportunity. SHARE Museum East’s Working with freelancers is a good starting point it takes you through what you need to think about.
South West Museum Development’s has a series of practical guides on commissioning and working with freelancers:
- How to commission freelancers in a fair, inclusive and transparent way
- How to write an effective freelance brief
- Contracts, work plans and working effectively with freelancers.
South East Museum Development provides a couple of examples of template contracts from:
