I have been consulting for 10 years a biostatistician for medical researchers and independent evaluator on grants. Regarding non-payment, I've only had a few problems that were eventually resolved through constant pushing on my end - voice mails, emails, certified letters, talking to the secretary. Certainly knowing your clients and their organization is much less risky than one-time clients. I have been advised in the past (though I've never had the courage to do it) to require the client to pay half of the estimated cost of the project up front, before starting work. Having read your stories, this is something that might be reasonable with unfamiliar clients.
Regarding grant writing, this is where I invest the most free time. "Nobody gets paid to write grants" I'm told. I'm not convinced of that - professional grant writers are paid and the grantees are often using work time (paid by another grant or their institution) to write new grants. I invest a great deal of unpaid time, always under short deadlines, writing grants. The work is not limited to just the statistical portions; often the objectives and methods are weak and those need a statistician's help to refine before writing the statistical methods. So these are time-consuming and as such, the pay-off in the end should reflect this. I try to negotiate a higher rate of pay for grants because of the free up-front work and the chance of not being funded.
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Nancy Buderer
Research Consultant
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