Dear Drupal community,
I'm a Drupal developer and have worked as such for several years. However, I'm making a change and moving away from this work. I have one very worthy client left, a local Seattle non-profit organization. They have piecemeal work on a regular basis and pay fairly. Right now, they want to have their website upgraded from D5 to D6. I've mostly completed the work, including some custom modules and theme changes. What remains is just some views/panels work and some other misc. items. They have $1000 in their budget to finish which should be plenty to go live, and provide some support and a couple of inevitable bug-fixes after release.
I'm protective of these guys, they are really good people. I want to leave them in capable hands. They need somebody with strong Drupal skills, obviously. But, also you must be able to work with their non-technical staff and help them realize their future plans. Being a small organization, and focused on their own industry, they're not plugged-in to all the various web changes and standards that happen, and will look to you for guidance and service as their organization will become more and more dependent on the website as time progresses.
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They want a person, not an organization. What I mean is, they want to pick up the phone and talk to you personally and have you help them in a reasonable time frame.
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You should be aware of the business side of things as well as technical, because they will look to you to make recommendations based on their business needs.
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You must be reliable, and possess high integrity.
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You must have excellent communication skills, especially when talking with bright people who just don't happen to be very tech savvy.
Working for this organization is a real benefit. They are fairly high profile and could be a nice part of the right person's portfolio. You might also feel good helping out an organization that isn't just in it for the money.
When you respond, please write about your experiences with companies. We're looking for somebody with a few years of experience, who's worked on website upgrades for similar sized organizations. Being local to Seattle might not be necessary, but it would be advantageous.
Thanks for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you!