Disabled Consultant Futures Fund
Increasing the leverage of disabled creatives who are asked to consult so they can confidently negotiate to be hired as writers, directors, and actors.
The Futures Fund radically increases the leverage of disabled creatives who are asked to consult by providing them a back-up offer to confidently negotiate to be hired as writers, directors and actors — if those are their desired roles.
If those aren’t their desired roles, or if they aren’t able to be hired in those roles on equitable terms, the Fund will buy back their time by paying them 150% of their first offer to fund their own creative pursuits.
About
Why We Created the Fund
For far too long, disabled writers and performers have been hired as disability consultants for more than 100x less than WGA minimums, giving their life experience and creative contributions to projects about disability that mostly financially benefit non-disabled people.
We’re pushing back on this practice by giving disabled creatives tools to negotiate for the positions they want, and an alternative option to redistribute their energy toward advancing their own creative endeavors.
Disability Consultant Case Study
Let’s say you’re a disabled screenwriter who is contacted by a major production company to consult on a tv show with a disabled lead character.
They offer you a $500 stipend to provide notes on multiple drafts of a script and advise on various representation issues, even though they are currently staffing a writers’ room of non-disabled writers, who will be paid at or above WGA minimums.
Before the Futures Fund existed, you had two options:
Take the Consulting Job ($): You accept your original consulting offer of $500 on a project that has no disabled writers or directors. You can try and negotiate for a better consulting rate, but the studio has all of the financial leverage, and there are no standards or negotiation tactics for you to rely on.
Decline the Job: You can decline the inequitable consulting job, but then you lose all potential income.
Now that the Futures Fund exists, you have three vastly better options:
Be Hired In Your Desired Role ($$$$): You leverage a back-up offer from the Fund and use Hire Disabled Writers Resources to negotiate for your desired creative role, and are paid according to WGA rates to be a writer on the project! A staff writer (the lowest role in a writers room) will make $70,000+ on a full season of a tv show.
Increase Your Consulting Earnings ($$$): You leverage a back-up offer from the Fund and use Hire Disabled Writers Resources to negotiate for a higher consulting rate, and are paid more than 1.5x your original consulting offer (such as $5,000, 10x the first offer).
Let The Fund Buy Back Your Time ($$):You try to leverage a back-up offer from the Fund and use Hire Disabled Writers Resources to negotiate for a higher consulting rate, but unfortunately you are not successful. The Fund then buys back your time by paying you $750, 150% of the initial consulting offer, to fund your own creative pursuits.
The Fund is currently open to disabled writers, actors and academics who are currently working in the entertainment industry as disability consultants. Creatives who meet these eligibility requirements can apply to become Approved Consultants.
Read the eligibility section in the FAQ below for more info.
Apply
FAQ
Table of Contents
Eligibility
Who is eligible for the Fund?
The Fund is currently open to disabled writers, actors and academics (“Consultants”) who are currently working in the industry and/or who have film or television experience. See the Eligibility section of the Terms & Conditions for more information.
How do I get access to the Fund?
Consultants who meet the eligibility requirements can become Approved Consultants by completing the application at inevitable.foundation/consultant-futures-apply.
This application asks for the following information:
Contact information
Information to verify basic eligibility
Demographic information
Professional history
Any relevant union and representative info
Information on prior consulting jobs
A series of brief statements (each 100 words or less) regarding your creative career goals, your perspective on disability representation in the industry, your current projects, and a personal biography.
Once you are an Approved Consultant, you can quickly submit Qualified Consulting Offers for reimbursement.
What type of consulting work is eligible to be reimbursed by the Fund?
The Fund is specifically focused on creative and story consulting—which is the job of writers, not consultants—on projects that lack disabled writers and directors. Accessibility consulting is not eligible for reimbursement because it is not a major practice that harms disabled writers. Work that the industry thinks is technical but is actually creative is eligible for reimbursement.
Inevitable Foundation reserves the right to determine eligibility at its sole discretion.
What kind of projects are eligible to be reimbursed by the Fund?
The Fund will reimburse consulting offers for projects from industry-recognized production companies, studios, networks and streamers, in addition to individual professionals who are attached to/working for industry companies (a “Qualified Offeror”). See the Definitions section of the Terms & Conditions for more information.
Which film and television projects are eligible for the Fund?
The Fund accepts Qualified Consulting Offers for television and film.
For television projects, the existence of multiple seats in the writers’ room creates ample opportunities for projects to employ disabled writers at multiple levels.
For film projects, only films with disabled lead characters that lack a disabled writer or director will be accepted as a Qualified Consulting Offer at this time. This limitation exists because there are fewer writers and directors working on any given film compared to a television show—and our strong preference is that films with disabled lead characters should, at minimum, have a disabled co-writer and/or a disabled director.
Films that have disabled supporting characters and disabled writers are a plus, but there is no expectation or precedent for a one-to-one correlation between the identities of all of a film’s characters and the identities of the writers, which is more reasonable to expect in television given the existence of a writers’ room.
What types of offers are considered Qualified Consulting Offers?
The Fund only reimburses Qualified Initial Consulting Offers, which means the rate of pay and scope of work that is initially offered to you. The Fund is not able to cover any negotiated increases off of the Initial Offer. See the Qualified Initial Consulting Offers section of the Terms & Conditions for more information.
Submitting a Funding Request
How do I submit an offer to the Fund?
Once you are an Approved Consultant, if you have an offer to consult from a Qualified Offerer, fill out the Initial Back-Up Offer Application with the relevant info. We will then get back to you after we review your application with potential next steps.
What does the application ask for?
Upload proof of the offer, which must include:
Defined rate of pay
Start date
A scope of work
Offer details including project name, payment amount, hours proposed, etc
Offeror information (name, title, email).
We will not contact this person, this is just for verification purposes
How you will invest your time and money in place of consulting
Confirmed Consulting Offers
What is a Confirmed Consulting Offer?
See the definition in the Terms & Conditions
How much money can I receive from the Fund?
There is a $1,500 per project cap on reimbursements from the Fund, which equates to the 90th percentile of consulting wages, according to our research. There is also a per-person per-year cap on total payouts from the Fund.
How is the payment structured?
The Fund pays out Confirmed Consulting Offers by hiring you as a 1099 contractor. Payments from the Fund are not grants. You should always consult with a tax professional but assume that you will need to pay taxes on the payout.
Are there any conditions of receiving a Confirmed Consulting Offer for the Fund?
Yes. To receive a Confirmed Consulting Offer, you will need to agree to our Consulting Fund Freelancer Agreement, which has a number of standard freelancer terms. As part of this, you also agree to not accept the work after receiving the payout, which would defeat the purpose of the Fund.
In addition, we require you to help with a few quick tasks that will allow us to continue pushing back against exploitative consulting work in the industry. This includes:
Filling out a survey about your current and past consulting experiences, which will help us with our data collection efforts.
Sharing an anonymous testimonial 90 days after receiving your payout about what other creative work the Fund allowed you to focus on.
What if the company asks me who else they could hire? If the company asks you for recommendations of who might be able to do the consulting job you have declined, please do not recommend anyone since this would defeat the purpose of the Fund. However, we do encourage you to point them to our Concierge service to hire great mid- and upper-level disabled writers and directors.
Referral Program
What is the Approved Consultant Referral Program?
The Referral Program leverages our network of Approved Consultants to spread the word about the Fund and help push back against exploitative story consulting work. The disability community is very networked and it’s within everyone’s interest that as many people as possible who are or might be asked to provide story consulting are aware of the Fund as a more equitable alternative.
How does the Referral Program work?
Approved Consultants can invite Prospective Consultants to apply for approval and will receive $100 upon a successful referral. See the Referral Program section of the Terms & Conditions for more info.
terms & conditions
What are the Disability Consultant Futures Fund Terms and Conditions?
Read the Disability Consultant Futures Fund Terms and Conditions
Have another question?
Email us at advocacy@inevitable.foundation
How does the Fund work?
The Disabled Consultant Futures Fund radically increases the leverage that disabled creatives who are asked to consult have by providing them a back-up offer to confidently negotiate to be hired as writers, directors and actors—their actual desired role. But if they aren’t able to achieve their desired role, the Fund will buy back their time by paying them 150% of the first offer to fund their own creative pursuits.
For Disabled Creatives
For Creative Executives, Showrunners, and Producers
Why are you making this Fund?
For far too long, disabled writers and performers have been hired as disability consultants for pennies on the dollar, giving their life experience and creative contributions to projects about disability that are usually helmed by non-disabled people. The clearest way to push back on this practice and push for the hiring of disabled creatives in the roles they actually desire, is to give disabled creatives the tools to negotiate for the positions they want while giving them comfort that they have an alternative option to redistribute their energy towards advancing their own creative endeavors if their negotiation is not successful.
Why isn’t it enough to just cast authentically?
The vast majority of the film and television projects that contemplate disability or have disabled characters were written by and helmed by non-disabled people. This means nearly all of the films and television shows about the disability community remain created and controlled by people who are not part of the community.
It’s unacceptable for any historically marginalized community to lack agency over their own stories and narratives. While allyship is important, it cannot come at the expense of accelerating and empowering disabled storytellers of all backgrounds.
Casting authentically, while a recommended practice, does not make up for the reality that nearly all of the people in charge of the project are non-disabled, thus few, if any, disabled people end up being in positions of power on the project.
Does the Fund apply to film and television projects?
It applies to both.
For television projects, the existence of multiple seats in the writers’ room creates ample opportunities for projects to employ disabled writers at multiple levels.
For film projects, films with disabled lead characters that lack a disabled writer or director will only be accepted as a Qualified Consulting Offer at this time. This limitation exists because there are fewer writers and directors working on any given film compared to a television show—and our strong preference is that films with disabled lead characters should, at minimum, have a disabled co-writer and/or a disabled director.
Films that have disabled supporting characters and disabled writers are a plus, but there is no expectation or precedent for a one-to-one correlation between the identities of all of a film’s characters and the identities of the writers, which is more reasonable to expect in television given the existence of a writers’ room.
How do I find disabled writers if I can’t hire consultants?
Inevitable Foundation’s Concierge service is a free, high-touch service that connects creative executives, showrunners, and producers with mid-career disabled screenwriters for development and staffing. We created the Concierge because there was no central place for industry professionals to discover, read, and meet mid-career disabled writers. Since launch, the Concierge has fielded over 500 requests from more than 140 different executives and showrunners. Over 100 of those requests have led to meetings with companies including Disney, Amazon, Apple, Paramount, AMC Networks, Lionsgate, and Starz. In the last three months alone, the Concierge has generated over $250,000 in earnings for disabled writers.
If you are looking to fill your development slate and/or staff a show, email concierge@inevitable.foundation to connect with fantastic mid- and upper-level disabled writers.
Will this Fund have a chilling effect on disability representation in the industry?
The current wave of stories with disability representation are mostly created by non-disabled people. At best, disabled actors and maybe one disabled writer get hired on a project—but this is the exception, not the rule.
We recognize this Fund might encourage non-disabled people to stop incorporating disability into their work. Instead, it should lead non-disabled people to put disabled creatives in positions of power, which will give them the choice to center their own community in their work if they so desire since disabled writers don’t write solely about disability.
Every historically marginalized community should be in control of their own stories and narratives, and the largest minority group in America is no exception.
Are you tracking what companies are the highest users of disability consulting?
Yes, and we plan to publish those results at a later date.
I have another question.
Please contact us at advocacy@inevitable.foundation