Hi,
I am thinking it might be good to look at other projects for ideas on how they handle various issues in raising money. Here are some links for OpenOffice:
Good discussions:
http://planet.documentfoundation.org/
(Why can planet.inkscape.org be like this?)
Donation page:
http://donate.libreoffice.org/
Supporters page:
https://www.documentfoundation.org/supporters/
Tav
On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 1:52 AM, Tavmjong Bah <tavmjong@...47...> wrote:
Good discussions:
http://planet.documentfoundation.org/(Why can planet.inkscape.org be like this?)
It is pretty similar, we just don't have many active bloggers. So it can be like that, we just need people who write regularly.
Donation page:
http://donate.libreoffice.org/
Another example is: http://www.blender.org/foundation/donation-payment/
Supporters page:
https://www.documentfoundation.org/supporters/
Interesting.
As a side mention, and it's something we hadn't really talked about previously, this is an approach of Blender's towards funded development: http://www.blender.org/foundation/development-fund/
One thing I take away from that page are that people that contribute to it, trust that the higher ups in the project know what needs to be worked on. The other thing I take away from it is maybe making subscription/recurring monthly donations to the general fund would be a nice option. I'd be shocked if there aren't people out there who would say "I make a living using Inkscape, surely I can give them $5 a month".
Cheers, Josh
On Fri, 2014-10-17 at 12:00 -0700, Josh Andler wrote:
On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 1:52 AM, Tavmjong Bah <tavmjong@...47...> wrote:
Good discussions:
http://planet.documentfoundation.org/(Why can planet.inkscape.org be like this?)
It is pretty similar, we just don't have many active bloggers. So it can be like that, we just need people who write regularly.
We haven't had control for a long time (several years) of whose blogs are being fed it. At one point, there wasn't a single mention of Inkscape on the site!
Donation page:
http://donate.libreoffice.org/Another example is: http://www.blender.org/foundation/donation-payment/
Supporters page:
https://www.documentfoundation.org/supporters/Interesting.
As a side mention, and it's something we hadn't really talked about previously, this is an approach of Blender's towards funded development: http://www.blender.org/foundation/development-fund/
One thing I take away from that page are that people that contribute to it, trust that the higher ups in the project know what needs to be worked on. The other thing I take away from it is maybe making subscription/recurring monthly donations to the general fund would be a nice option. I'd be shocked if there aren't people out there who would say "I make a living using Inkscape, surely I can give them $5 a month".
Cheers, Josh
So I spend some time last week pumping information out of a board member of the Doc. Foundation. In general, they have a lot of individual sponsors, and then also corporations that are willing to kick in funds as needed. They get a lot of individual sponsors from their download page ask. A couple things he mentioned was making sure to set an initial value of something like $5, where if you leave it open ended people wonder "can I contribute enough to make a difference" and then don't contribute because what they could easily afford they don't throw in.
One thing that they've done similar to us is encourage other people to set up crowdfunding of development features. They've left it even more open ended than ours, but it seems they're roughly of the same mind as us, nice to get that feedback.
For conferences and hackfests they're mostly getting bids from local organizing committees that are in charge of fund raising for that event. I'm not sure how that'd work for us, but it could be something to try if we wanted to try and create something decoupled from something like LGM. I know that conferences like GUADEC have been partially funded by local tourism or promotion grants, which might be something we could tap into with a local organizing committee.
Another thing that he pointed out is how the D community is setting up their conferences:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2083649206/the-d-programming-language-c...
Not sure that we could sell a bunch of $5K items, but it might be a way to view the budget and what one would get. I love the idea of selling the conference T-shirts to non-attendees as it's something that I think we can do well (Inkscape users make cool designs I'd want on a T-shirt) and it lowers the cost of printing if we increase the numbers.
Ted
On Fri, 2014-10-17 at 10:52 +0200, Tavmjong Bah wrote:
I am thinking it might be good to look at other projects for ideas on how they handle various issues in raising money. Here are some links for OpenOffice:
Good discussions:
http://planet.documentfoundation.org/
(Why can planet.inkscape.org be like this?)
Donation page:
http://donate.libreoffice.org/
Supporters page:
https://www.documentfoundation.org/supporters/
Tav
On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 08:40:06AM -0500, Ted Gould wrote:
So I spend some time last week pumping information out of a board member of the Doc. Foundation. In general, they have a lot of individual sponsors, and then also corporations that are willing to kick in funds as needed. They get a lot of individual sponsors from their download page ask. A couple things he mentioned was making sure to set an initial value of something like $5, where if you leave it open ended people wonder "can I contribute enough to make a difference" and then don't contribute because what they could easily afford they don't throw in.
One thing that they've done similar to us is encourage other people to set up crowdfunding of development features. They've left it even more open ended than ours, but it seems they're roughly of the same mind as us, nice to get that feedback.
For conferences and hackfests they're mostly getting bids from local organizing committees that are in charge of fund raising for that event. I'm not sure how that'd work for us, but it could be something to try if we wanted to try and create something decoupled from something like LGM. I know that conferences like GUADEC have been partially funded by local tourism or promotion grants, which might be something we could tap into with a local organizing committee.
Another thing that he pointed out is how the D community is setting up their conferences:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2083649206/the-d-programming-language-c...
Not sure that we could sell a bunch of $5K items, but it might be a way to view the budget and what one would get. I love the idea of selling the conference T-shirts to non-attendees as it's something that I think we can do well (Inkscape users make cool designs I'd want on a T-shirt) and it lowers the cost of printing if we increase the numbers.
Ted
Thanks for digging into this. I agree the T-Shirt perk for $50 donors is nice, although in this case it didn't raise that much total. Most of their money came from the $5k sponsors; I wonder who they were and what the motivation was. Did they know ahead of time there were 2 corporate backers interested in that level?
Next biggest source was the Conference Goer fees. That might work better for conferences than for hackathons though.
Bryce
On Fri, 2014-10-17 at 10:52 +0200, Tavmjong Bah wrote:
I am thinking it might be good to look at other projects for ideas on how they handle various issues in raising money. Here are some links for OpenOffice:
Good discussions:
http://planet.documentfoundation.org/
(Why can planet.inkscape.org be like this?)
Donation page:
http://donate.libreoffice.org/
Supporters page:
https://www.documentfoundation.org/supporters/
Tav
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participants (4)
-
Bryce Harrington -
Josh Andler -
Tavmjong Bah -
Ted Gould