Re: Questions for the candidates: finances
Le lundi 19 mai 2014 à 11:19 -0700, Jim Nelson a écrit : Aside from corporate sponsorship and personal donations, what area(s) would you investigate to increase and stabilize GNOME's finances? (Or do you feel these two methods are the only or best way to achieve this goal?) I tend to think that corporate donations are desirable for many reasons. I doubt I need to go at length here to point out that a handful of corps with marketing/charity/RD budgets are easier to target and convince than a thousand individuals working hard to earn every penny, that GNOME needs an ecosystem that includes not just hobbyists but also people who are paid to do maintenance professionally, and so on and so forth. I don't yet have a magical answer for an easy new funding model for GNOME (if it was so easy, there wouldn't be any problems to fix), but as part of my duties I would like to brainstorm and explore new venues. Just from the top of my head: - Check the possibility for grants from public institutions and look into corporate sponsors from outside our traditional circles, instead of limiting ourselves to our current corporate ecosystem. - Humble Indie Bundle-style in-app-store donations system, though there was some legal/technical problem with that idea, I forgot which, maybe someone here remembers? Otherwise I ought to ask hughsie again. - Online services for individuals - Out-of-the-box fundraising schemes. We might have some surprises there. However funny that might sound at first glance, I've seen golf tournaments (and other event types) providing massive amounts of funds to some non-profits. - Our somewhat nonexistent OEM story - Untapped potential, like the privacy fundraising initiative - Other fancy ideas that may arise ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates: finances
Hiya Jim! On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 11:19 AM, Jim Nelson j...@yorba.org wrote: Hello everyone, Aside from corporate sponsorship and personal donations, what area(s) would you investigate to increase and stabilize GNOME's finances? (Or do you feel these two methods are the only or best way to achieve this goal?) Corporate sponsorship tends to bring in a lot of money in and it is always beneficial to be able to increase that. If you wanted to do grass roots based fundraising, that would require setting up a better donation system than we have now. We can definitely do better, and the board has had some discussions about alternative systems last year. Some people have suggested using flattr or some other method of micro-payments that could bring in revenue. I think I threw out something about tying donations to bug fixes. You could setup marketing calls to various companies who might be using our stack and ask for donations that way for smaller amounts like 1000 dollars or 5000 dollars. In general, they do okay, but they won't be very large. You need to grow the audience to really take advantage of that strategy. Another idea might be to take advantage of funding opportunities like grants from the government or companies. We don't necessarily have to make a technology argument, we could focus on programs like OPW or our underlying philosophy of freedom. We are after all a philanthropic organization, we could make that argument. Here is a grant application from JP Morgan as an example: http://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/Corporate-Responsibility/grant-programs Of course this one is corporate, but I'm sure we can find others. Another idea is to fundraise at conferences, and not necessarily our tech ones. Most of fundraising is about making 1:1 connections and then making a compelling argument. sri -- Jim ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates: finances
On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 23:08 +0200, oliverp wrote: On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 11:19 -0700, Jim Nelson wrote: Hello everyone, My questions for the candidates is: Aside from corporate sponsorship and personal donations, what area(s) would you investigate to increase and stabilize GNOME's finances? (Or do you feel these two methods are the only or best way to achieve this goal?) Good question, thanks for asking. I think the first priority for the Board must be to focus on stabilizing the current sensitization. make sure invoices are paid for the OPW etc. Then I think much work can be done together with the community in both areas you mention (corporate sponsorship and personal donations). Long term, more methods can be considered. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates: finances
On Tue, 2014-05-20 at 10:48 +0200, oliverp wrote: On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 22:02 -0400, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote: I think we can do more with organization sponsorship and individual donations than we are doing right now. We have a product that is naturally of interest to a lot of consumers and corporate users, and of interest to hardware and application developers to be compatible with. We also have technology that is of interest to people to build their own products with or create services around. When it became known that the GNOME Foundation was in a difficult financial situation, we received an unprecedented number of individual donations. These were previously untapped donors who are very supportive of GNOME. I think we should aim to increase how much we get in private donations, and we can do that by reporting to our donors how their money is being used and having yearly fundraising campaigns. We need to dedicate our fundraising energy to these two sources because they are complimentary to the goals we have for advancing our technology. As a Foundation, even with an ED, we have lim limited resources, so we need to consider how to allocate them most effectively. I'd like to share a great article about fundraising by the Ada Initiative founders which has informed some of my views on it. http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-ada-initiative-founders-on-funding-activism-for-women-in-open-source That is a great article thanks for sharing! The Engagement Team have started a discussion [1] about how the Foundation can become more effective in the fundraising, and as part of that effort set-up a wiki page [2] with some resources on the subject (have added the post it to the wiki). I hope you are interested in joining this effort, the Engagement Team want to collaborate closely with the Board in this. 1https://mail.gnome.org/archives/engagement-list/2014-April/msg00052.html 2https://wiki.gnome.org/Engagement/FriendsOfGNOME/HowWeCanImprove ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates: finances
In my previous email responding to Kat, I touched on this very subject. First and foremost we need to determine two things: 1) How much money we are currently spending on what, and what is truly needed. 2) How much money is currently coming in, and from where - this should be broken down into categories - individual donations, and at least the top 5-10 corporate donors ought to be listed along with how much they have been and are giving. Then we should move on to determining how we can raise donations from individuals and small businesses. Donors should not have to search the website to figure out how to do so - a small, but prominent link to 'Contribute to GNOME!' would not be out of place on the site. Currently it takes at least 3 clicks to arrive at a site where you can donate - and your only choice for doing so is via paypal. Why don't we accept other payment options? Is it just that nobody has bothered to set it up? If that is the case, we should be asking for help doing so. At the very least, we should accept payments from google, facebook and amazon, and we should at least consider accepting bitcoins as well. Finally, there are other funding options available online - a quick search reveals numerous websites with ideas on how to more effectively raise funds. Utilizing every tool available to us to raise money from individuals should be our first priority. Only after we have fully explored these options should we go back to asking for yet more corporate money. Emily Gonyer On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 5:28 AM, oliverp oliver.pro...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, 2014-05-20 at 10:48 +0200, oliverp wrote: On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 22:02 -0400, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote: I think we can do more with organization sponsorship and individual donations than we are doing right now. We have a product that is naturally of interest to a lot of consumers and corporate users, and of interest to hardware and application developers to be compatible with. We also have technology that is of interest to people to build their own products with or create services around. When it became known that the GNOME Foundation was in a difficult financial situation, we received an unprecedented number of individual donations. These were previously untapped donors who are very supportive of GNOME. I think we should aim to increase how much we get in private donations, and we can do that by reporting to our donors how their money is being used and having yearly fundraising campaigns. We need to dedicate our fundraising energy to these two sources because they are complimentary to the goals we have for advancing our technology. As a Foundation, even with an ED, we have lim limited resources, so we need to consider how to allocate them most effectively. I'd like to share a great article about fundraising by the Ada Initiative founders which has informed some of my views on it. http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-ada-initiative-founders-on-funding-activism-for-women-in-open-source That is a great article thanks for sharing! The Engagement Team have started a discussion [1] about how the Foundation can become more effective in the fundraising, and as part of that effort set-up a wiki page [2] with some resources on the subject (have added the post it to the wiki). I hope you are interested in joining this effort, the Engagement Team want to collaborate closely with the Board in this. 1https://mail.gnome.org/archives/engagement-list/2014-April/msg00052.html 2https://wiki.gnome.org/Engagement/FriendsOfGNOME/HowWeCanImprove ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list -- Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. - Goethe Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr.Seuss Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. - Albert Einstein ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates: finances
Hi Jim On 2014-05-19 11:19, Jim Nelson j...@yorba.org wrote: Aside from corporate sponsorship and personal donations, what area(s) would you investigate to increase and stabilize GNOME's finances? (Or do you feel these two methods are the only or best way to achieve this goal?) I think that corporate donations are an effective way to raise funds for the Foundation, as they traditionally have dwarfed personal donations. While personal donations are secondary in terms of absolute value, the sheer number of individual donors is an indication of the high level of support from a wide range of people. Perhaps there is room for a middle ground, where interested parties (individuals or companies) could contribute to specific goals, and interested maintainers or contributors could pick up tasks and work on improving GNOME based on the goal ideas. To me, this is somewhere between the current fundraising campaigns, such as those for accessibility and privacy, and the idea of bug bounties. I think that the idea might have too much overhead, but it could work well at getting both new contributors and donors involved in the project. I am sure that there are lots of potential problems with it, but I hope the idea can spark some discussion. -- http://amigadave.com/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates: finances
Hi. On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 11:19:37AM -0700, Jim Nelson wrote: Aside from corporate sponsorship and personal donations, what area(s) would you investigate to increase and stabilize GNOME's finances? (Or do you feel these two methods are the only or best way to achieve this goal?) Reducing costs; although I think it is quite obvious that you cannot spend money that you don't receive. I see potential in various areas, such as our Friends of GNOME programme, the travel budget, or the people we pay for GNOME related work. Right now, we ship donors' gifts from the US. That's probably not the most economical option, esp. when sending things to our European donors. We could scale down travel support or have a policy that covers, say, up to 80% by default. Also, while we need committed people to do work for us, I'm not entirely convinced that we need to pay a salary. We could try to get committed community members to take over responsibility before thinking of hiring someone to do it for us. I don't think we can scale down much further now, though ;-) As for sources of income, I think we need to make it attractive for people to give (personal) donations first, before thinking of scaling up or expanding in other areas. That includes being able to receive money via something not Paypal or reaching out to our donors and tell them what we've done with the money they gave us. Cheers, Tobi ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for the candidates: finances
- Original Message - From: Jim Nelson j...@yorba.org To: Foundation List foundation-list@gnome.org Sent: Monday, May 19, 2014 2:19:37 PM Subject: Questions for the candidates: finances Hello everyone, First, I'd like to voice my support for Dave Neary's question. I also believe finding an executive director may be the most important task for the incoming board. From some earlier discussion it sounds like the other defining task will be stabilizing GNOME's finances. Others have asked questions about improving the foundation's financial situation, but almost every response is about locating more corporate sponsorship and increasing personal donations. My concern is that those paths are well-trod and potentially lean, and that novel ways of financing should be explored. At least one candidate (Emily Gonyer) stated a desire to ween GNOME off of corporate sponsorship. My questions for the candidates is: Aside from corporate sponsorship and personal donations, what area(s) would you investigate to increase and stabilize GNOME's finances? (Or do you feel these two methods are the only or best way to achieve this goal?) I think we can do more with organization sponsorship and individual donations than we are doing right now. We have a product that is naturally of interest to a lot of consumers and corporate users, and of interest to hardware and application developers to be compatible with. We also have technology that is of interest to people to build their own products with or create services around. When it became known that the GNOME Foundation was in a difficult financial situation, we received an unprecedented number of individual donations. These were previously untapped donors who are very supportive of GNOME. I think we should aim to increase how much we get in private donations, and we can do that by reporting to our donors how their money is being used and having yearly fundraising campaigns. We need to dedicate our fundraising energy to these two sources because they are complimentary to the goals we have for advancing our technology. As a Foundation, even with an ED, we have lim ited resources, so we need to consider how to allocate them most effectively. I'd like to share a great article about fundraising by the Ada Initiative founders which has informed some of my views on it. http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-ada-initiative-founders-on-funding-activism-for-women-in-open-source Thanks, Marina -- Jim ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list