Re: Kicking off some questions for the 2015 sysadmin sponsorship brochure (or fundraising campaign)
Hey Jeff, Thanks for taking the lead on this, and apologies for the delay! Replying to this has been on my list for a long time. Please find some notes below. On Sun, 2015-11-08 at 00:07 -0500, Jeff F. T. wrote: > Globally, this project will involve: > 1. > Thinking about the amount of money we want to aim for, what we'll achieve with it. To give you a rough idea, the work done with our part-time sysadmin (Andrea), over the past two years, costs an average of 1200 USD per month (roughly). In my view we ought to try to raise as much money as we can for this, and if we do raise significantly more than last round's 45K, it might mean we can assign additional resources or that we can keep going for longer. In my opinion, asking for a specific amount of money almost always works better than asking for an unbounded amount. Of course I agree that the more we get, the better it is; perhaps a good way to formulate this would be to borrow from crowdfunding and use the concept of "stretch goal"? Not sure if it really applies to a field that's almost by design in "response mode" like sysadmin though. Relatedly, do you/Andrea see the sysadmin work (and expenses) increasing or decreasing in the medium term? Are there any medium or large projects that we would do if we had funds or resources? 1. > Figuring out who our target audience and sponsors would be. Besides the traditional prospects in our circles, I was thinking this can be a nice opportunity to involve cloud/hosting companies and get them closer to GNOME that way. We'll need contacts in those organizations for that to work, though. That's certainly interesting; what angle are you planning to use to approach such companies? I know that some existing sponsors of the project e.g. support us because of our focus on user privacy. > Thinking about the perks that sponsors get for various levels (if > any?) of sponsorship It's my perception that the kind of work that typically falls under this sort of budget is fairly unglamorous, and not easily perk-able (is that a word?). What kind of things did you have in mind? 1. > Considering whether a traditional brochure-style print/PDF document is the way to go, or if it should be some sort of dynamic crowdfunding-style micro-site, or... 1. > Whether we take the "one big fundraiser every few years" approach, or if we do some sort of annual/recurrent "subscription" supporter model. I'm under the impression the monolithic fundraising approach is easier and better (not sure we want to be hunting for funds all the time for this particular aspect). I think these two questions are pretty much related. If we expect to get a few large donations from enterprise supporters, the brochure would probably work better, while if we want people to be able to contribute small donations, it might be worth considering alternative models. Personally, I would tend to lean towards fewer large donors for this, as they're more likely to understand the importance of having funds available, with less needs to promise something in return or justify the expenses. > I think once we start answering a couple of the initial questions > above I should be able to complete my notes/draft and turn that into > a wiki page for review (or we could have a collaborative editing > session with etherpad if you prefer). Let me know what you think, hope this helps! Thanks, Cosimo___ engagement-list mailing list engagement-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/engagement-list
Re: Kicking off some questions for the 2015 sysadmin sponsorship brochure (or fundraising campaign)
Jeff F. T. wrote: ... > Globally, this project will involve: > > Thinking about the amount of money we want to aim for, what we'll achieve > with it. To give you a rough idea, the work done with our part-time sysadmin > (Andrea), over the past two years, costs an average of 1200 USD per month > (roughly). In my view we ought to try to raise as much money as we can for > this, and if we do raise significantly more than last round's 45K, it might > mean we can assign additional resources or that we can keep going for > longer. I think it's important to be realistic with the goal amount - it wouldn't look great if we fall really short. The previous fund raising campaign happened in a different era, and I remember that the Friends of GNOME aspect of it - which Stormy and the then marketing team put a lot of work into - was one of the most successful ever run. > Figuring out who our target audience and sponsors would be. Besides the > traditional prospects in our circles, I was thinking this can be a nice > opportunity to involve cloud/hosting companies and get them closer to GNOME > that way. We'll need contacts in those organizations for that to work, > though. It doesn't have to be hosting companies: it could be others in the server/sysadmin space. Think Vagrant, Puppet Labs, Nagios, and so on. > Thinking about the perks that sponsors get for various levels (if any?) of > sponsorship The obvious thing would be positive marketing, through social media and the website. Or maybe Andrea could get tattoos of the company logos? :) Can't think of much else. > Considering whether a traditional brochure-style print/PDF document is the > way to go, or if it should be some sort of dynamic crowdfunding-style > micro-site, or... Agree with the previous comment - it depends on who is targeted. > Whether we take the "one big fundraiser every few years" approach, or if we > do some sort of annual/recurrent "subscription" supporter model. I'm under > the impression the monolithic fundraising approach is easier and better (not > sure we want to be hunting for funds all the time for this particular > aspect). Again I think it depends on who the target is. If we get sponsorship from companies that wouldn't usually support GNOME, then a subscription model would make sense. Otherwise, a campaign with one time donations would allow us to cast a wider net. A word of caution though: I wonder whether it is wise to introduce an additional sponsorship stream at a time when there is pressure on the channels we already have (advisory board fees and conference sponsorship). > What our timeframe should be. This has been an "ASAP" item for a while but > we need a deadline here. Unfortunately it's quite late as corporate budgets > are being set as we speak (end of year 2015), though there is the > non-negligible opportunity of leveraging year-end donations by individuals. ... I don't have much insight here, I'm afraid. What are the best times of year to ask for money? We need to take other funding drives into account here. Allan ___ engagement-list mailing list engagement-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/engagement-list
Re: Kicking off some questions for the 2015 sysadmin sponsorship brochure (or fundraising campaign)
On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 1:33 AM, Cosimo Cecchi wrote: > In my opinion, asking for a specific amount of money almost always works > better than asking for an unbounded amount. Totally agree. > Of course I agree that the more we get, the better it is; perhaps a good way > to formulate this would be to borrow from crowdfunding and use the concept > of "stretch goal"? Yep. That also means that we should formulate initial goals. It could be something as simple as "keep the infrastructure running for two years". We want to avoid raising funds for a topic without showing attaching something that feels concrete to the audience. "Implementing the following list of security features" would probably work better than the "raising funds for security" campaign we had. From a management perspective once the target is reached as well, because then we have a more precise notion of what we want to do with the funds. > Not sure if it really applies to a field that's almost by design in > "response mode" like sysadmin though. I'm sure we can find a way to express it that feels like a goal to reach. > Relatedly, do you/Andrea see the sysadmin work (and expenses) increasing or > decreasing in the medium term? > Are there any medium or large projects that we would do if we had funds or > resources? https://www.dragonsreach.it/2015/12/02/three-years-and-counting/ has a few items, like implementing single sign-on. -- Alexandre Franke GNOME Hacker & Foundation Director ___ engagement-list mailing list engagement-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/engagement-list
Re: Kicking off some questions for the 2015 sysadmin sponsorship brochure (or fundraising campaign)
Hullo again, o wise ones! To help provide background and ammunition for the brochure, Andreas published a report on his activities in the sysadmin role: https://www. dragonsreach.it/2015/12/02/three-years-and-counting/ I would really appreciate the team giving me some input, on the questions I raised in my previous mail in this thread. It is much easier for me to do the work full-steam with the assurance that y'all agree on the principle.___ engagement-list mailing list engagement-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/engagement-list
Kicking off some questions for the 2015 sysadmin sponsorship brochure (or fundraising campaign)
Hi all, You may be familiar with the fact that circa 2010, we ran a successful fundraising campaign to allow the GNOME Foundation to hire a part-time sysadmin (see also http://www.vuntz.net/journal/post/2010/06/02/Hiring- a-sysadmin-for-the-GNOME-infrastructure for a memory refresher). This has served us well throughout the years: both the reliability and the scope of services offered on the GNOME infrastructure rose a lot since then. As of 2015, this fund has now been depleted. Personally, I find it rather impressive that we've managed to do so much, for as long as five years, with the money raised back then (around 45k total if we take into account the money contributed through Friends of GNOME during that campaign). For some time* now, I've had in my mind to prepare some "marketing collateral" (such as a brochure) to prepare a new campaign, seeing this as an opportunity to try bringing in a new set of sponsors this time around, and perhaps raise a bigger amount that would allow us to accomplish more work on our infrastructure. A while ago I started a draft/braindump on my end, but before I spam you with such a wall of text, I would like to know who would be interested to help with this. Globally, this project will involve: Thinking about the amount of money we want to aim for, what we'll achieve with it. To give you a rough idea, the work done with our part -time sysadmin (Andrea), over the past two years, costs an average of 1200 USD per month (roughly). In my view we ought to try to raise as much money as we can for this, and if we do raise significantly more than last round's 45K, it might mean we can assign additional resources or that we can keep going for longer. Figuring out who our target audience and sponsors would be. Besides the traditional prospects in our circles, I was thinking this can be a nice opportunity to involve cloud/hosting companies and get them closer to GNOME that way. We'll need contacts in those organizations for that to work, though. Thinking about the perks that sponsors get for various levels (if any?) of sponsorship Considering whether a traditional brochure-style print/PDF document is the way to go, or if it should be some sort of dynamic crowdfunding -style micro-site, or... Whether we take the "one big fundraiser every few years" approach, or if we do some sort of annual/recurrent "subscription" supporter model. I'm under the impression the monolithic fundraising approach is easier and better (not sure we want to be hunting for funds all the time for this particular aspect). What our timeframe should be. This has been an "ASAP" item for a while but we need a deadline here. Unfortunately it's quite late as corporate budgets are being set as we speak (end of year 2015), though there is the non-negligible opportunity of leveraging year-end donations by individuals. Thoughts? Going through the wealth of information in https://wiki.gnome.org/Sysadmin/ and digesting that into a compelling pitch. Or, alternatively, just taking the existing draft/plan I had written some time ago and extending (or simplifying!) it. Designing the documents (or website) that would serve as the medium for this message. I think once we start answering a couple of the initial questions above I should be able to complete my notes/draft and turn that into a wiki page for review (or we could have a collaborative editing session with etherpad if you prefer). We'll need to start pushing for this as soon as possible to ensure the continuity of our infrastructure work. I do think this a pretty interesting marketing project, so I thought I'd share the fun here! ;) Any takers who would like to help make this happen? *: In fact, I initially touched upon this subject here during the winter... https://mail.gnome.org/archives/engagement-list/2015-March/ms g00019.html___ engagement-list mailing list engagement-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/engagement-list
