Last October, Denis Lévesque of Public Works and Government Services Canada’s Office of Small and Medium Enterprises presented a seminar on how freelancers can sell their services to the government.
I thought the seminar was informative and even eye-opening. I’ve contemplated the process, as I’m sure many of you have. But I haven’t done anything about it. Yet.
For fun (and possibly, profit) I decided to check out one of the websites that advertises government contracts, MERX.com. As an occasional travel writer, one listing caught my eye. As of this writing, there’s a request for proposals on a contract for Alberta’s tourism bureau:
Travel Alberta requires a Contractor to help increase consideration of Alberta as a Vacation destination. This will be accomplished through content facilitation, editing, and publishing services that support the operation and maintenance of the Travel Alberta Buzz and Features sections on the Industry.TravelAlberta.com website.
Unless I read it wrong, the contract appears to be worth up to $75,000. That’s a lot of coin, for a freelance web editor.
The details can be found here (click on “View Bid Package”), and you’ll also find a list of your potential competition (click on “View Interested Vendors (Bidders)”). A lot of the bidders aren’t based in Alberta, and some aren’t even in Canada. And while there are a few marketing firms in contention, quite a few of the bidders seem to be individuals. Dare I say, freelancers, like you and me.
Of course, MERX only lists contracts worth $25,000 and up. Individual government offices handle contracts below that amount, which can be bid on through Professional Services (PS) Online.
As some of you who attended the seminar will remember, even if you win a contract as an individual service provider, you must have someone to whom you can subcontract the work, in the event that extenuating circumstances prevent you from completing it yourself. So, partnerships, at a minimum, are required for this work. Having someone else to divvy up the work involved in procuring a contract is another advantage of strategic freelance partnerships.
Do you have a like-minded fellow freelancer (or two or three) with whom you’d like to bid on lucrative government contracts? Or corporate work? Or any other type of work arrangement? Would you even know where to find them, or how to collaborate effectively if you set up just such an affiliation?
Mediaville is all about bringing freelancers together and leveraging our collective creative and productive potential for mutual benefit. Which is why we’re organizing a networking event this spring that will try to do just that.
