I currently have a charity that has been persistently asking me for free products to help them support an event they are running and I’m not really sure how to handle it.

The actual product is fairly cheap but there will be hours and hours of design work that I will need to put in to everything and I just don’t feel like it’s fair to put all those hours in for free. They also haven’t given me any incentive, meaning I don’t think they are even going to advertise or market my business for making them. However, I do feel like a scumbag if I tell them no, it is for charity after all 😓

I’m still a fairly new business and growing rapidly. If you’ve been in this position, you probably know that this is an exciting yet stressful time of being very busy and having limited funds since you are investing so much back into keeping up with the growth of your business. I’m already stretched so thin for time, which is our biggest and most valuable resource.

If they could provide me with all of the design files I could probably provide the product for free, although it’s still a big ask. I just hate when people ask small business owners for free things! We aren’t raking in millions of dollars each year to giveaway, but then we’re looked down upon for saying no to a charity ☹️

How do you handle these situations?