If you are interested in participating in the below discussion (which I just kicked off) please consider joining:
https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-sponsors-discuss and sharing your thoughts. Thanks, Brian ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Brian Gupta <brian.gu...@brandorr.com> Date: Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 6:34 AM Subject: Debian fundraising To: debian-sponsors-disc...@lists.alioth.debian.org We have previously discussed and agreed that in the longer term we should move to having Debian fundraising more coordinated/centralized, rather than have each part of Debian potentially speaking separately to the same companies. Perhaps it is now time to move in this direction, since it seems that this kind of problem is now starting to happen more often in practice. (Some subgroups have independently reached out to shared sponsors and asked for separate sponsorship, leading in some cases to a degree of confusion from the sponsor organizations.) It has been proposed (by persons other than myself) that perhaps it is time to move to a project-wide Debian fundraising team (potentially with a delegation, though this may not be required immediately). I am not sure if we are ready for this change yet, but do believe we need to seriously evaluate making the switch at this time. Issues (that I am aware of): 1) Who would that team consist of? IE: I am concerned we likely don't have enough folks interested in joining such a team, but would very much love to be proven wrong. (Fundraising is a really difficult grind, that can be draining to do year after year, and I don't believe anyone involved in Debian really enjoys it, including myself.) I will throw my hand up, as I don't totally suck at it, and feel it might be one of the more useful ways to spend my Debian time, but really in no way does one person make a team, especially for a time-sensitive task such as fundraising. (Basically we need a team of people that are willing to commit doing all sorts of fundraising year after year.) 2) How would a centralized team handle local fundraising. (My sense is that local sponsors can be contacted by local organizers, but any sponsors that have a realistic chance of contributing to global events should be contacted through a global team, with central records of the contact details and of responses.) 3) Related to #2. How to deal with language differences, if local fundraising is also included, which it probably should be outside of the smallest events? 4) Debian is largely a bottom up organization. This is looking to change a bottom up process to a top down process. (IE: centralization.) I'm not sure how I feel about our readiness for such a change, but do feel that this should be our goal for this particular set of tasks. Please discuss. Thanks, Brian -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/CACFaiRw-N=hjkw8og4uysjiiqmvqgaehahi5v6iu9+1gwap...@mail.gmail.com
