11 minutes
Paying for expertise, and what the payment has to survive Budget before you invite. The fee covers preparation and review as well as the meeting, and participation costs are the division's to carry, not a test of who can afford to help.
What you’ll be able to do Price a co-design engagement before it is offered: the hours, the rate, the payment route and timing, and the participation costs the division carries rather than expecting people to absorb them. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: What should happen before the invitation goes out? Document a next step for Paying for expertise, and what the payment has to survive: Take one engagement your team is planning and write the full cost on one line each: fee for session time, preparation and review time, travel, care, interpreting and captioning, formats and technology support. Take that number to whoever holds the budget before the invitation is drafted. What you are actually buying When a division asks someone who uses a service to help redesign it, it is buying expertise it does not have and cannot generate internally. That expertise was acquired at a cost the division did not pay: years of navigating the process, explaining the same situation to a new worker, finding out what a form meant by getting it wrong and living with the consequence. Treating it as a favor, or as a chance for the person to be heard, misprices it in a way everyone notices.
The fee is for time, and the time is more than the sessions. Reading a draft beforehand is work. So is talking with three other families first, because you were asked to bring more than your own view. So is the travel, and for a person whose energy is limited, so is the day afterward. An engagement priced at meeting hours alone becomes an engagement where preparation quietly does not happen — and then the division concludes that the group did not have much to add.
Participation costs are a separate matter and they belong to the division: travel and parking, care for a child or an adult family member during the session, interpreting and captioning, a document in a format the person can actually read, help with an unfamiliar meeting platform, a room with somewhere to sit and a way to hear. Leaving those to participants puts a price on taking part, and it is paid by exactly the people whose experience the division most needs.
The line items an engagement budget usually forgets Preparation time: reading the draft, reviewing a summary of the data, talking with other people before the session.
Review time between and after sessions: checking notes, responding to a revised draft, answering one more question.
Travel, mileage and parking — and the extra hours a trip costs someone who does not drive.
Care for a child or an adult family member, at the hours the sessions are actually held.
Interpreting, captioning and translation of materials, with the lead time each of those genuinely requires.
Usable formats produced before the meeting rather than after it, and the staff hours to produce them.
A contract or grant for a community organization whose staff time, space or recruiting you are asking for, separate from payments to individuals.
The report-back: writing it, translating it, and sending it in the formats people asked for.
Fee, participation cost, or something a payment cannot substitute for? Two hours of session time and one hour of reading the draft beforehand.
Choose a category Fee for the work Participation cost the division carries Something a payment cannot substitute for Mileage and parking for someone traveling in from outside the metro area.
Choose a category Fee for the work Participation cost the division carries Something a payment cannot substitute for A written answer explaining why the group's main recommendation was not adopted.
Choose a category Fee for the work Participation cost the division carries Something a payment cannot substitute for An interpreter booked with enough lead time to be the same interpreter at every session.
Choose a category Fee for the work Participation cost the division carries Something a payment cannot substitute for Reviewing a revised draft between sessions and sending comments back.
Choose a category Fee for the work Participation cost the division carries Something a payment cannot substitute for Decision rights stated in writing before the first session.
Choose a category Fee for the work Participation cost the division carries Something a payment cannot substitute for Care for a family member during a session held at four in the afternoon.
Choose a category Fee for the work Participation cost the division carries Something a payment cannot substitute for A contract with a community organization for the hours of the staff member you asked to facilitate.
Choose a category Fee for the work Participation cost the division carries Something a payment cannot substitute for Being told at the start which parts of the decision are fixed, and why.
Choose a category Fee for the work Participation cost the division carries Something a payment cannot substitute for Check matches Reset Four practical problems with paying people, and how to plan around them Vendor setup and tax forms Paying an individual who has never done business with the state usually means a registration step and a tax form, and for some people the request itself is alarming. Plan for it. Say in the invitation what will be asked for and why, offer help from someone who has done it before, and start the setup when the invitation goes out rather than after the first session. If the setup cannot be completed for a particular person, that is a question for the fiscal and contracting offices early — not a reason to quietly drop them from the group.
The wait A payment that arrives six weeks after the session is a different offer than one that arrives in two, and for someone on a tight budget the difference can decide whether they take part at all. Find out the actual timeline before you promise one. Say it plainly in the invitation, in the worst case rather than the best. Then treat a long wait as a problem to raise with the offices that own the process, rather than a fact of life the participant absorbs on the division's behalf.
Income-tested benefits For some people a payment counts as income and can affect benefits they rely on. The amount, the timing and the form of the payment can all matter. Do not guess on a person's behalf, and do not decide for them that they should be paid less. Say in the invitation that payment is offered, describe how and when it would be made, offer a choice about timing where the division can, and point people to the office or advocate who can answer questions about their own situation.
Organizations are not the same as individuals Asking a culturally specific organization to bring staff time, recruit participants, translate materials or host a session is asking for work it would otherwise bill for. That needs a contract or a grant, not an invitation to partner. Recruiting is the item most often taken for free: the organization spends relationships it took years to build, and the division gets the participants. Price it, and say whose relationships are being spent.
Put the rate in the invitation What you can change You control whether the first message a person receives says what the work is, how many hours it involves, what it pays, and when the payment actually arrives.
What to watch for Do not invite first and sort out payment later. The people most likely to accept an unpriced invitation are the ones who can afford to, and the ones who cannot will decline without telling you why.
Your next step Before your next invitation is sent, price the full engagement — fee, preparation, review, travel, care, interpreting and formats — and take the number to whoever holds the budget.
A private reflection, for you only and never collected: think of the last time you asked someone outside the division for their time. What did it cost them to say yes — hours, travel, care, energy, the retelling of something difficult — and what did the division pay for? Write it down somewhere you will see it before the next invitation goes out.
Try a situation A DSD team wants six people — three who use the service, two family members, and one staff member from a culturally specific community organization — to help redesign a set of notices over four sessions. The project has no engagement line in its budget. A manager suggests offering gift cards from an existing supply, and asking the community organization to take part as a partner.
What should happen before the invitation goes out? Send the invitation with the gift-card offer, and be transparent that this is what the project can do right now.
Ask the organization to take part without payment this round, with a commitment to pay for the next one.
Price the work first — hours, preparation, review, travel, care, interpreting and formats — find the route that can pay individuals and the organization, and move the first session rather than the payment.
Consider your choice Try another response Carry this forward Budget before you invite. An invitation issued without a funded rate and a working payment route is a request for free work, whatever was intended by it.
Pay for preparation and review, not only for the hour in the room. Reading the draft, talking with other families beforehand, traveling, and answering a follow-up question are all the work.
Participation costs are separate from the fee and belong to the division: travel and parking, care for a family member, interpreting and captioning, usable formats, technology support, a room that works. Leaving them to participants sets a price on taking part, and the people who can pay it are not the people whose experience you most need.
The payment route itself can be the barrier. Vendor setup, tax forms, a wait of several weeks, and payments that count as income for someone receiving income-tested benefits are all real, and all of them can be planned around if they are raised before the invitation rather than after the first session.
A scenario about an engagement with no line in the budget, a sorting exercise separating the fee, participation costs and things a payment cannot substitute for, and a knowledge check on spending a limited engagement budget honestly.
Take one engagement your team is planning and write the full cost on one line each: fee for session time, preparation and review time, travel, care, interpreting and captioning, formats and technology support. Take that number to whoever holds the budget before the invitation is drafted.
Browse and download only. Course notes are not typed or saved on this page.
Reset this lesson
Previous lesson Next lesson Carry this into practice Asking people what they think of a finished plan is not co-design, and unpaid expertise is not a partnership.
Return to the experience: What did you notice or try, whose perspective informed it, and what would you keep or adjust?
Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.
