Ben Scott wrote:
>
> What would we do with the bucks?
>
We could buy a banner! A booth! A box!
We could rent space! Go place! Buy locks!
(with apologies to Theodore Geisel)
We could endow a scholarship to NELS/FossEd.
We could contribute money to FSF, PSF, anySF, Creative Commons, anybody.
We could buy audio equipment.
We could pay for setup of embroidered schwag.
We could build a chuck box and build our booth-in-a-box.
Spending money is not a problem.
> I suspect if we had a serious need to generate cash, this group of
> people would have no trouble finding a way. But we don't have a
> compelling need. We just have a vague idea of, "It would be nice to
> have money."
Not at all. I think you want to put the horse before the cart. I'm just
proposing we find out if we can make a horse. Once we do, we can find
out if there's anything we can do with it.
I don't seriously expect that promotional items will turn us into a
money-making operation. With shipping, handling, wastage, maybe we'll
break even. Maybe we'll raise enough money to open a bank account. At
least we might make some cool shirts, hats, coffee mugs or bumper stickers.
I did not intend the manufacture of promotional items to primarily be a
money-maker. Primarily, promotional items are to *promote* GNHLUG
(promoting Linux, FOSS and NH), hence the name.
>> Has anyone done something similar or have some suggestions.
>
> Sell email addresses like <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> for $X per year.
Interesting. Perhaps problematic: reselling hosting services provided
for us. But I'd buy one. Separate discussion?
> For the volume I think we're likely to encounter, I suspect it's
> actually feasible to do the order taking and fulfillment
> administration ourselves.
Perhaps. I'd like to do a nice set of collared shirts ("polo" shirts,
though I hardly ever play polo in mine) with a GNHLUG logo, or perhaps
just "GNHLUG" -- those we could take individual orders for specific
sizes and colors, as they'd probably run $35 - $25 a piece.
Then there is the more commodity swag - coffee mugs, stickers. I hear
Cafe Press quality may not be what it once was reputed to be. I recall
the old GNHLUG mugs that Jerry got done were pretty sharp. I'd like an
oval sticker of the DLSLUG logo (http://www.dlslug.org). I'd like us to
make a bumper sticker of "GNHLUG - Don't take Freedom for Granite" and
see if anyone would buy one. If we could set up either a local
promotional company or an online store were we could do some bulk orders
and individual orders, that'd be cool.
I've done group book orders for UGs before, and spent four months
chasing down the guy who either owes money or whose books I'm dragging
around in the back of my car. It's a hassle. So a one-time shirt order,
yes, let's do that. For the dinky stuff, let's offload the order
processing to someone else.
> Maybe if we sell "paying memberships" to people, they get a T-shirt
> or something.
>
> Note that I'm not suggesting membership dues be required to be
> associated with GNHLUG. But if people are just itching to spend
> money, no reason we shouldn't take it from them.
I'm not averse to paying for an annual membership. I do this now for the
ACM, EFF, ACLU, UAW and other orgs. But that discussion has to wait a
bit for us to discuss the proper type of memberships based on the IRS
regs for the form of non-profit we choose to be.
> Of course, it might be easier if the 20 or so people who always
> speak up on this topic just got together some night and threw their
> cash in the middle of a table, and then drink until the money was
> gone. ;-)
Tonight!?? I'm ready!
--
Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
http://www.tedroche.com
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