Dropping Slow Clients

When to Fold ‘em?

Currently, this is a decision that I am wrestling with. Typically, I am pretty selective about the projects I accept, so that when I am working on freelance stuff, I can do so with maximum efficiency. Last year though, against my better judgment, I let my little brother convince me to do some pro-bono charity work. Without going into too much detail, the client paid money to a non-profit organization, for the website design package that I had “donated.”

Now, it’s not the working for free that bothers me, it’s the fact that this should be a really simple project, but has been dragging on since October. Typically, this is not the type of customer I would’ve accepted. Even if I was being paid, I would simply refund their money at this point, just to be done with it. Since neither one of these is a factor, I am unsure as to where to go from here.

This is not the first time something like this has happened. I have written articles in the past on Lack of Vision, and even wrote a feature for To-Done.com called Setting Boundaries on Burnout. None of those is really applicable to my current situation, so I’m unsure as to best course of action. I’ve asked the client to be more cooperative, but that has not helped yet.

I suppose I will just have to wait it out, and learn my lesson about blindly saying “Yes” to taking on additional work. I’m wondering though, have any of you ever been in situations like this, and how how did you deal with them? I could use a bit of advice as to how to keep afloat while carrying dead weight.