This is a most welcome and thought out change to our sponsorship program. Nice work Ted!

1. RedHat does use inkscape internally, and they ship Inkscape in their distributions. Though it would be fun to try and get 10% of RHEL profits (or conversely 10% of Debian's) for the Inkscape Product tier. We could either have a specific tier for "Inkscape Distributor", redistributing inkscape is a not-significantly altered form. Or just say they should be a Small Firm level and relax the requirement to advertise the use of Inkscape. Though perhaps they'd be up for doing that if it was advertised on the Fedora website, maybe something they already do. I would recommend talking to Máirín Duffy about what Redhat might think, if they want to do repeat donations etc.

2. Educators, there's technically a level "we put Inkscape into the national curriculum for our entire country", but that's really hard to quantify. Perhaps the Education Program can be that tier and we can ask national governments to contribute. (probably unlikely though given the amount of admin work needed).

3. Maker spaces are quite different. Sometimes commercial, comestimes public, some libraries, some community centers, others are for profit memberships like a gym. So not quite the same as the educational space. Plus the graphic could be a cog shaped thing.

I believe this program to be more about networking and projecting a strong Inkscape ecosystem than it is about fundraising. We should be sure to emphasize that part of it as fund raising is something we really need to do, but network management is something we would benefit from being much better about.

Best Regards, Martin Owens

On Fri, 16 Sept 2022 at 14:28, Ted Gould ted@gould.cx wrote:

As many of you know one of my goals has been to try and figure out our sponsorship program and reboot it. It used to be our primary income as a project, and I feel that long term it is what is needed to get long term growth of cash flow to allow things like hiring individuals to work on Inkscape. I keep tweaking and changing this, but I've gone with putting a list of issues at the end that I see as unresolved, please help! Sorry, I do realize it is a long read, but I think worth it in the end.

I think that our old program had the problem that it talked primary about how much money people wanted to give to Inkscape. So we ended up with a bunch of people who basically wanted to buy ads. But we didn't end up with people who love Inkscape and want to see it grow as our sponsors. This hurt us both financially, but also part of the sponsorship program is to get people working with you, and we didn't attract those people.

So how I'm thinking that we should change our program is to move from "how much money" for the levels of program to "how you work with Inkscape." And I with that, not having all the "payment" be financial, but instead including publicly talking about the project and usage. Also, to provide time for employees to contribute to the project for the higher levels. My goal here is to provide a level that makes sense for everyone who's working with Inkscape in an organization to have a foothold to get that organization connected to the project. Along with that restructuring I'm suggesting we rename from a "sponsor program" to a "partner program."

To be clear, there are a lot more details to work out in the individual items. But I think it is at a point where it is starting to come together as a plan and I'd really like to hear folks thoughts on how it can be better.

Freelance Designer/Developer

For an individual or small firm up to three employees Publicly lists either Inkscape development or design as the list of services that they provide customers (i.e. on their webpage) $120/yr Listing in the directory of Inkscape sponsors as someone providing Inkscape services. Encouraged to include the "Inkscape Partner" badge on their website

Small Firm

For a small design/development firm that provides Inkscape services Employs up to 10 employees in the company or division that provides Inkscape services Publicly lists Inkscape services on the information on the company or division $1000/yr Listing in the directory of Inkscape partners as someone providing Inkscape services. Encouraged to include the "Inkscape Partner" badge on their website.

Inkscape Services Provider

For a large design/development firm/division that provides Inkscape services Up to 50 employees Provides a public statement of allowing some employees to contribute meaningfully to the Inkscape project Publicly lists Inkscape services on product offerings $10K/yr Listing in the directory of Inkscape partners as someone providing Inkscape services. Encouraged to include the "Inkscape Partner" badge on their website.

Inkscape Product

Customize Inkscape for use in their product through an extension or patch that they then provide to their customers Provides a link and information about the Inkscape project and what changes or modifications they've made Ensures that changes and modifications/additions are correctly distributed under the Inkscape licenses Donates a percentage of sales back to the Inkscape project for the product in question (depends on product by generally Inkscape recommends 10% of profits on the Inkscape value added) Listing in the directory of Inkscape Partners using Inkscape in products Encouraged to include the "Inkscape Product Partner" badge on their website If the product includes retail packaging it is also encouraged to include the "Inkscape Product Partner" badge

Educator (Individual)

For an individual educator who chooses to create content with or about Inkscape for their classroom Publicly publishes information about their class and that it uses Inkscape Gets permission to use the school logo and information on the "Inkscape Educators" page $0/yr Includes the "Inkscape Educator" badge on their website

Education Program

For a department or program that uses Inkscape Publicly publishes how their program or department uses and contributes to Inkscape Gives permission to use the school logo and information on the "Inkscape Educators" page $100/yr per lab or classroom or program Includes the "Inkscape Educator" badge or their website

Makerspace

For community oriented makerspaces that use Inkscape At all instructional or learning sessions about using equipment that takes vector graphics students are taught how to get a design from Inkscape onto the tool. All general public computers in the makerspace have Inkscape installed for member use Includes the "Inkscape Makerspace" on the Makerspace webiste Allows for usage of the makerspace logo on the "Inkscape Makerspaces" listing webpage $0/yr

Obviously agreeing on the program is only the first step of the whole process. Next steps would include working with Vectors on the partners website and various badges. Also we'd need to work with SFC on the agreement we'd need people to sign to ensure we can use their logos and that they'd agree to the other parts of the program. I'm not assuming we'd police it heavily, but more count on people to do what they said they would.

Issues I see that I'd like comment on:

We don't have a way for someone who just wants to sponsor. For example, Red Hat has sponsored us in the past. They do use us internally, but I don't believe those efforts have a public face. Not sure one of these categories works for that. Should it? Or should we keep a generic sponsorship thing around? (seems like confusion, but I don't know) The education ones aren't great. I feel like that's a place we can grow credibility in "look at all these folks learning Inkscape." Which if we wanted to write grants in the future would really help. But I'm not sure the individual classroom vs. program thing makes sense. Just all education the same? All $0/yr + logo usage? Makerspace, I like it, but is that the same as an education program? Seems like it is a different type of thing to me, but I'm not sure.

Process as I see it once we have a blueprint:

PLC Votes on the levels and requirements Prepare materials. Work with: Vectors work on badges Vectors work on partners website SFC work on agreements Work with Vectors to do a promotional roll out

Generally speaking I'm volunteering to bring this through all those stages, but I'd love help. If anyone wants to join in talk to me!

Ted _______________________________________________ Inkscape Board of Directors mailing list -- inkscape-board@lists.inkscape.org To unsubscribe send an email to inkscape-board-leave@lists.inkscape.org

I think we definitely need to do both. Do you think we shouldn't replace the sponsorship program then?

I think on reflection; we’ve structured sponsorships in the format we have to provide a simple bucket to put large donations into. A small set of rewards are an extension, and website lists enable us to show off a healthy list of sponsors as useful PR.

But on the other hand if we think of this as forging a strong network of interdependence in the vain of say TideLift; then this partner program makes more sense. A network of people providing services in, holding responsibilities for, and being dependent on, the Inkscape project is a net positive for the project as it creates community and contribution where we currently have silos.

Having both is only useful if we were seeing the donations focused value coming out of the sponsorships. But we aren't. Only RedHat is still there and that was a side negotiation between me and Máirín (mostly Máirín working RH internals for a year or more). Do you think we should keep the program just in case?

Kinda funny, I wasn't even thinking of RH as a distributor of Inkscape, more as a user in their internal design teams :-)

Large companies are tricky; technically Canonical uses Inkscape... or use to when mpt worked there. But not the rest of the design teams. They probably have more people in the Fedora team than RHEL marketing using Inkscape. {this is pure speculation}

Do we make a distinction between asking Gnome to be a partner as a non- profit and asking a for profit company?

Do you think we should handle distributors? I'm not sure that is en vogue today for desktop applications, but we could make a category for it.

Encouraging distributors to put their nickel down might be useful. I personally believe that there's a big hole where distributor responsibility goes, even if they're non-profits, they're putting themselves between a user's ability to connect and contribute and the projects they repackage. Being pointed in a more positive direction might be healthy.

But this sounds a bit complicated. Are redistributors partners, or regular contributors? Would we invite someone distributing Inkscape on the iPad for money? Should Ubuntu be a parnet via for example your snap work?

Hmm, I guess all the makerspaces around me are all basically non-profit community orgs, usually with a membership fee. So I'm not personally familiar with the other setups. Do you think we should distinguish between a for-profit and non-profit makerspace?

It'll be good for them to all join one category and help each other with links to the same forums etc. There's no material difference in their dependence on Inkscape, but there might be difference in the ability to pay. OTOH if a school is mostly teaching CNC workshops then it smells like a makerspace but with a school board. What's your impression of what is taught in schools?

Best Regards, Martin Owens