FutureGood Referral Program

FutureGood Referral Program

FutureGood values referrals from staff, strategists, clients, and friends of the organization. When you introduce us to an organization that becomes a paying client, we say thank you with a referral fee.

Registering a referral means you agree to the terms below. Please read them first.

Eligibility

You can take part if you're FutureGood staff, a strategist or contractor, a current or former client, a FutureGood Studio alum, a FutureProof alum, or a friend or supporter of the organization.

What Qualifies as a Referral

A referral is a direct introduction to an organization we haven't been in touch with before, where your introduction is the reason they end up hiring us.

You make the introduction. We take it from there — the sales conversations, the proposal, the contract, and the project design.

The contract has to be signed within eighteen months of the day you register your referral. After that, the referral expires. If the organization signs with us later, no fee is owed.

Registering a Referral

Tell us before you make the introduction, or at the same time.

Email [email protected] with the name of the organization and the person you're introducing us to. We'll write back to confirm we've got it. 

Referral Fee

If your referral leads to a signed contract, you'll receive five percent (5%) of Collected Fees.

Charitable Alternative

Some people aren't allowed to accept a referral fee. An employer policy, a funder requirement, or a rule about your role may prohibit it.

If we determine that's your situation, we'll make a charitable donation of five percent (5%) of Collected Fees instead, on the same schedule.

Please suggest where the donation should go, and we'll consider it.

Thank you for helping us connect more organizations to the power of strategic visioning, futurism, and future-focused leadership!

The Fine Print

We may decide that someone isn't eligible to take part, or isn't eligible for a cash payment. That decision is ours to make.

If it isn't clear whether your introduction led to the work, we'll make that call. Our decision is final.

Registering matters. If you don't register the referral and we don't confirm it, there's no fee — no matter how things turn out.

If two people register the same organization, we'll look at who introduced us first and how. That decision is ours, and we won't split a fee between referrers.

Collected Fees are the service fees we actually receive from the client. They don't include reimbursed expenses, travel, subcontractor or pass-through costs, sales tax, or late fees. If money is refunded, credited back, or reversed, Collected Fees go down by that amount.

You earn the fee as we get paid, not when the contract is signed. We'll send your payment within thirty days after the end of the month the client pays us.

If the client doesn't pay us, we don't owe you a fee on that amount.

If we've already paid you and the amount later drops, we'll either take the difference out of a future referral fee or ask you to send it back within thirty days.

The fee covers that first contract only. It doesn't carry over to renewals, extensions, or later projects with the same client — unless it falls under the exception below and we've confirmed it in writing.

There's no fee if the organization found us on their own. That includes our website, our marketing, an event, or any other way they reached out first.

There's no fee if they were already a client, already a prospect, or already talking with us when you registered.

There's no fee if a former client comes back for more work on their own, or if a former client moves to a new organization and contacts us themselves.

Renewals, extensions, and continuations of work we're already doing don't qualify.

There's no fee if the introduction came out of work you were already doing for or with FutureGood, or out of duties that are part of your job.

And we won't pay a fee if doing so would break the law, go against your employer's policies, or conflict with a funder's rules.

One exception. If your introduction leads to work with a new department, program area, affiliate, or division of an organization we already work with — work we wouldn't have gotten otherwise — we may pay a fee.

On charitable donations: we won't donate to an organization where you or a close family member is an officer, director, trustee, or employee. We won't use the donation to cover a pledge you've made. And we won't accept naming or recognition that benefits you personally.

Donations go out in FutureGood's name to 501(c)(3) organizations. You won't receive a tax deduction, a donation receipt, or anything else in return.

Either way, you're confirming that taking part is allowed under your employer's policies, your funders' requirements, and any laws that apply to you — and that you've made any disclosure you're required to make.

If you work at FutureGood, you can make a referral. But you can't be part of the decision about the project that comes out of it. That means no role in deciding whether we pursue it, how we price it, what goes in the proposal, or whether we sign it. You also can't supervise anyone who does.

Referrals that come out of business development, marketing, client relationships, or similar work that's already part of your job aren't eligible.

We pay staff referral fees through payroll, so taxes come out the way they normally do. The fee doesn't count toward your salary, bonus, commission, retirement contributions, or paid leave. Getting one doesn't change your compensation or guarantee you'll get another.

If you leave FutureGood before all the installments have been paid, we will decide whether to pay the rest on a case-by-case basis.

If you're a strategist or contractor, check your agreement with us first. You can take part as long as it allows it. If anything here conflicts with your agreement, your agreement wins.

A referral that comes out of the work you're doing for us — or an introduction you made while doing it — isn't eligible for a fee.

Referral fees are separate from what we pay you under your contract. They're not an advance against it. And they don't change your status as an independent contractor or make you an employee, agent, or partner.

Before we can pay you, we need a completed W-9 on file. If you're not a U.S. person, we need a W-8BEN or W-8BEN-E instead. We may also need a few other details.

We'll report referral fees as the law requires, and we'll send a 1099 where the reporting threshold applies.

We pay fees before tax unless we're required to withhold. Taxes on your fee are your responsibility, and we can't advise you on how it'll be treated.

If you're outside the U.S., withholding rules and treaty paperwork may apply. If paying you would create a compliance, currency, or sanctions problem we can't reasonably work around, we may decline the payment or make a charitable donation instead.

We won't pay a referral fee to a government official or government employee. We also won't pay anyone if accepting the money would break the law, go against their employer's policies, or conflict with a funder's rules.

Payments go out in U.S. dollars by check or ACH. Any bank, transfer, or currency conversion fees are yours.

If we haven't received your paperwork within twelve months of a fee becoming payable, the fee is forfeited. Unclaimed property laws may still apply.

Making a referral doesn't make you part of FutureGood. You're not an agent, employee, representative, or partner, and please don't present yourself as one. Don't negotiate, quote or discuss pricing, make commitments, collect payment, or make promises about what we'll deliver. Send the introduction our way and we'll handle the rest.

Anything non-public you learn through this program — our pricing, our proposals, how we work, who our clients and prospects are — please keep to yourself. Use it only to make the introduction. This holds even after the program ends or you stop taking part. And only share information about a prospective client with us if you're allowed to share it.

We may change, pause, or end this program at any time. If we do, it won't affect a referral you've already registered and we've already confirmed. It also won't affect a fee you've already earned on a contract that's already signed.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California. Any dispute will be handled in the state or federal courts in California.

These terms are the full agreement between us about this program. They replace any earlier conversations or understandings about referral compensation.

You can't hand off or sell your right to a fee or donation without our written consent.

If part of these terms turns out not to hold up, the rest still stands. And if we don't enforce something once, that doesn't mean we've given up the right to enforce it later.

The parts about tax and payment, agency, confidentiality, and governing law all keep applying after the program ends or after you stop taking part.

When you register a referral, you're agreeing to these terms as they stand at that moment. You're also confirming that you've read them, that taking part is allowed under any policies, funder requirements, or laws that apply to you, and that what you've told us is accurate.