> > Yes it's a challenge, but I really do think that it is essential. It's > really not cool to accept money from people and not keep them > informed.
This sort of direct-to-donor communication is a requirement and whether it's a newsletter or some other type of communication some sort of follow-through is needed. We also need to encourage the Board of Directors to post > more about what they are doing. It's a shame that we the board doesn't > have a public face like this. People donate to the Foundation, they don't donate to individual GNOME projects. So the newsletter should a GNOME Foundation newsletter. The ones that should be communicating directly to donors should be the Board of Directors. The newsletter will have to be a platform for Board members to communicate directly to donors. On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 6:15 AM, Allan Day <[email protected]> wrote: > Karen Sandler <[email protected]> wrote: > ... > >> So, some general thoughts: > >> > >> * One of my main issues with Friends of GNOME right now is that we > >> don't do enough to engage with existing donors. If people donate, the > >> least they should get back is regular updates about how we are > >> spending their money. Right now, Friends of GNOME is a black hole - > >> people make their donations and that's pretty much it. This is not an > >> effective way to encourage people to keep donating or to get them to > >> donate more (see below). One obvious thing we should be doing is > >> sending regular updates to donors, probably as an email (I wonder if > >> this could be tied in with the annual report somehow - eg. quarterly > >> donor updates could be used as the basis for each annual report). > > > > I like the idea of a newsletter - the main thing is that we actually > commit > > to write something on a regular basis. Given how hard it was to get > > quarterly reports together I think this is non-trivial. > > Yes it's a challenge, but I really do think that it is essential. It's > really not cool to accept money from people and not keep them > informed. > > I would at least like to have the conversation about how we can make > this happen, before we discard the possibility. We should look into > ways that we can be clever about generating the required content. For > example, we could: > > * Recycle material that we generate for news posts. eg. When we write > news posts about events, fundraising campaigns or releases, we could > repurpose the same copy for the newsletter, or generate emails from > them directly. "eg. GNOME 3.12 released today: thanks for helping!", > "Greetings from GUADEC", etc. > * Recycle the copy from blog posts about events (from those who have > been sponsored). > * Automatically sends emails to donors on the anniversary that they > started to donate. Maybe these could have a link to a page with > information about what we've been doing with the money. > * Use the annual reports as a way to generate the copy. Each time we > write the report, we can have an article about Friends of GNOME which > can get turned into a newsletter. > * Automatically contact donors if their direct debits stop coming in, > in some way. It could be a mistake or, if it is deliberate, we need to > find out why. > > >> * We ought to be looking to existing donors as the potential source > >> of additional cash. If someone is making a regular donation, the > >> chances are that they will also be willing to donate to periodic fund > >> raising campaigns. This is the way a lot of charities operate - once > >> you are a donor they will contact you about their campaigns. One thing > >> we need to do here is separate Friends of GNOME and our fund raising > >> campaigns into different entities. > >> > >> * It doesn't seem like the adopt a hacker postcards and the t-shirts > >> are being tracked and distributed very effectively, and I'm not > >> convinced that we have the administrative capacity to do a good job of > >> these. I wonder if we should drop them in favour of other incentives > >> that don't have the same administrative burden. Ideas: discount > >> vouchers, vouchers to spend on GNOME merchandise, freebies at > >> conferences, membership badges you can download and print at home. > > > > Actually, thanks to Tobi, this has gotten much much better. Reminder > emails > > are reliably sent. I know that at least for the postcards I'm asked to > send, > > I get nagged periodically until they are sent (though I usually send them > > right away - I swear!) > > I think the issue is that it is failure-prone. Not everyone will send > them straight away. We just aren't going to send them on time, every > time - and when these items don't arrive on time, it can potentially > take the shine off the whole experience. > > I've repeatedly heard complaints from people about late post cards or > t-shirts, or items that never arrived. Sometimes they complain > publicly - that isn't good. When something doesn't arrive, there's no > way to check on what's happening either - there's no easy way to check > if you're still a part of the scheme, whether we have the right postal > details, when the item was due to be sent, whether it has been sent, > etc. > > >> * It's time to be thinking about another campaign. When that happens, > >> we need to be certain that we will be able to use the money fairly > >> quickly - this hasn't happened in the past, and that is potentially > >> damaging. (Again, people need feedback about how their money is being > >> spent, otherwise they might not donate again.) We should think about > >> what we actually need money for, and I'd like the board to provide us > >> with some advice here. There are outstanding sysadmin tasks, for > >> example, like upgrading Bugzilla, or maybe we need to improve our > >> infrastructure in some way. I think this has benefited us in the past. > > > > I like this a lot, but we should also consider that the campaigns are > also a > > way to state our ideals. > > Yes, and I've been in favour of that in the past. My concern is that > we could end up making our values look hollow if we don't visibly > follow through on our promises. At the same time, direct, practical > goals can also be attractive for donors - our sysadmin campaign was > very successful, for example - and if there are areas where we need > the money for something important, that seems like a valuable > contribution the Engagement Team could make. > > > Also, I > > think maybe just keeping people posted about the plans would help. We > don't > > really have an informal way to communicate officially. The closest we > have > > is the GNOME Twitter feed, I guess, but there's nothing on the website > where > > we can post small updates and musings, etc. > > I'd like to make gnome.org/news more informal - the main thing it > needs is to expose peoples' user accounts, so they can post as > themselves. We also need to encourage the Board of Directors to post > more about what they are doing. It's a shame that we the board doesn't > have a public face like this. > > >> * Aside from the funding campaigns, we don't actively promote or > >> publicise Friends of GNOME. This is a basic error - we should be > >> routinely inviting people to join, posting about the scheme, and > >> advertising what we are doing with donations. This should be part of > >> the Engagement Team's regular activities - not just when we happen to > >> have a campaign running. A good way to start here would be to come up > >> with a plan for what kinds of posts we should be making and how often > >> we should be making them; this is something we can check ourselves > >> against at each team meeting. > >> > >> * It seems to me that the Foundation's money goes into a central pot > >> - I don't get the impression that particular income is earmarked for > >> specific uses. I wonder if the finances could/should be organised in > >> such a way that we can definitely say where Friends of GNOME money is > >> going, or even channel it to areas that we think are more interesting > >> to donors. Again, that's something for the board. > > > > The money technically goes into a single account but the funds are > tracked. > > For example, I'm pretty sure the GF is still spending down the Sysadmin > FoG > > campaign amounts. > > Oh great! Those are details that I'm sure people would really like to > hear about. > > >> * Finally, we need data about our existing donors. There needs to be > >> a system where we have email and postal addresses so we can contact > >> them. We need to know how much they donate and how long they have been > >> members for. We need to know how many people are joining/leaving over > >> time. We need to know why people are joining/leaving. This will > >> require new infrastructure, and we need advice from the board about > >> what is technically required and how we can get it. > > > > We started to implement CiviCRM, but there were a few reasons why this > > wasn't a great solution for GF, including the fact that we have > indefinite > > donors. Tobi's scripts are capable of generating this data. For example, > he > > was able to generate a list of donors who had been giving for two years > or > > more. Perhaps it's not the most ideal solution but it's something and > he's > > surely work with us to create regular reporting scripts if we want them. > > OK, it would be good to have a conversation about that. I wonder if > Tobi could join us for a meeting some time, or maybe I'll just ask him > when I see him next. :) > > We also need to figure out a good way for the Engagement Team to get > access to the data when it is generated. > > Allan > _______________________________________________ > engagement-list mailing list > [email protected] > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/engagement-list >
_______________________________________________ engagement-list mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/engagement-list
