Minimum expectations in order for us to even forward your opportunity to our listserv: While survivors are always free to volunteer their time in any ways they see fit (and many enjoy volunteering in their communities), human trafficking survivors have historically been expected to perform labor, storytelling, and public speaking or media services for free, to their detriment. Thus, the NSN has chosen to allow survivors to identify and explore their own volunteer opportunities on their own terms. The NSN does not share opportunities that pay less than $25/hour at all, and our hourly external consulting rates for our consultants start at $81.25/hour and increase with skill in alignment with similar paid consultant roles.

Additional recommended practices: 

1. Build hours into the project for the consultant to work with you to establish norms, practices, and expectations that feel good to both of you, including time for reviewing and revising the contract.
2. Any expenses should be covered upfront rather than as reimbursements (including flight, travel, hotel, and per diem).
3. Lived experience contractors should be paid in a timely manner, without “chasing down” delayed contract payments or unnecessary delays.
4. Travel time should be included in all hourly-based compensation.
5. For any work that requires the survivor to engage with trauma narrative specifics (their own, or the stories of others) or that is expected to be emotionally draining, include an additional hour or two (depending on the length of the engagement) for wellness/recovery/debrief in the hourly estimation as a kind of “hazard pay.”

Suggested workarounds you might find useful:

1. Media does not pay due to ethics around paying a source. Consider hiring a survivor to co-author an article, or co-produce a video segment. Nonprofits who refer a survivor to a media opportunity can identify survivor leadership or mentoring funds and compensate the survivor for time spent preparing for the media interview as professional skill-building. Consider reserving funds in your budget for skill-building support.
2. Research often does not pay for research participation. Any surveys that take more than 5-10 minutes should offer some kind of compensation or gratitude. Longer surveys should be paid at a consulting rate. If your restrictions do not allow you to pay for focus group participation, consider establishing a paid Expert Advisory Group to guide your work or hire consultants who have lived experience to partner on the development, implementation, and interpretation of research. Provide resume-building attribution where possible.

Minimum expectations in order for us to even forward your opportunity to our listserv: Often, there are power dynamics that fuel an expectation that survivors share their trauma stories. Many of us will sometimes share details of our stories, but find that others then hyperfocus on our stories as the primary indicator of our value. Because the NSN is committed to shifting this norm and highlighting the skills and insights our members have, we no longer share opportunities that mandate a survivor share their personal trauma stories. Many of our members have been exploited by organizations using them for storytelling, with one member noting that she joined the NSN specifically to do advocacy work with a higher degree of privacy.

Additional recommended practices: 

1. Familiarize yourself with practices of Trauma-Informed Storytelling.
2. Ensure that any co-presenters or co-trainers do not assume the consultant will not be sharing recommendations and professional insight as well. Co-presenting with survivors is a great model, but we want to be careful not to trap survivors into being  “just”the “lived experience expert” when co-presenting with the “professional expert.”
3. Discuss with the survivor in advance how they would like leadership to handle it if other team or audience members ask uncomfortably personal questions.
4. Consider moderating audience questions to ensure consultants are less likely to be hit up with overly intimate or personal stories.
5. Consider implementing a royalties system, or ongoing payment for repeated use of elements of the consultant’s story, images, or quotes. Meaning, every time you intend to put a quote into a new document, or re-use their image on a different platform, negotiate a renewed contract.
6. Consider hiring interns for projects just above their skill level on tasks the consultant would like to learn and provide professional development for survivors who intern with you to build their non-storytelling consulting options.

Recommended practices: The NSN is more likely to share opportunities to collaborate on the development of an idea. If you are submitting a request for a consultant on an already-developed project, please add a sentence indicating how survivor input was incorporated during the planning process.

Minimum expectations in order for us to even forward your opportunity to our listserv: Research opportunities must either have an IRB or a readily available organizational safeguarding and ethics policy.

Additional recommended practices: 

1. When working with survivor consultants who do not have formal research training, remember that you can support their meaningful participation with simple tutorials and sufficient onboarding. Build time for mentoring into your project.
2. Consider engaging a smaller number of survivor consultants for regular collaboration on the work while simultaneously engaging a larger pool of diverse survivors through surveys and focus groups.