Sponsorship updates
Hi all,
Just wanted to braindump some news & notes about sponsorship.
1. First, today we've gained one new Bronze Stylus sponsor, icons8.com. Yay!
2. A second sponsor is in the works, we're just waiting on Conservancy for processing, and should be annnounceable soon.
3. I have sent out renewal reminders to our current sponsors that have hit their expiration date. I figure we should give them a week to reply before retiring their entries from the sponsor page.
4. Should we think about increasing our Bronze sponsorship level?
Today SFC told me that they don't like to bother invoicing amounts below $1000, which makes things a bit difficult if our Bronze sponsors want invoices. So moving Bronze to $1000 may make sense just for accounting purposes.
5. Is it time to add a Diamond level?
When we set up the sponsorship levels, we originally included a Diamond level, but were not sure what amount it should be and decided we'd leave it out and revisit when it seemed plausible that we might get one. Given that we have two platinum sponsors currently, it seems plausible now. What do others think?
6. Do we want to increase other sponsorship levels?
I'm guessing no, but if the board thinks we should this might be a good time to do so. We may want to do some TBD grandfathering of existing sponsors.
7. In order to improve our tracking of sponsors a little, I've added a private "Financial" sub-group to inkscape-board in gitlab, with a "sponsors" project under it:
https://gitlab.com/inkscape-board/financial/sponsors/issues
I figure we can use the issues tracker with each issue used for a separate sponsor. I'm treating the issue description as a semi-structured data record in YAML format, in case some day we want to tack on tools or integrate with other stuff. For now though it'll just be maintained manually, but this should hopefully permit >1 bus factor on sponsor management.
Since Financial is a sub-group of the board, it is possible to add other highly trusted but non-board people to only this group. I've added Maren since due to her heavy involvement in sponsors and other financial matters in the past.
8. I have also added a Legal sub-group to inkscape-board, with a project for focusing on branding issues like trademark infringement investigations. This is also a private group, so only visible to board members plus trusted non-board people. I've added Pamela Chestek and Denver Gingerich, who are Conservancy lawyers that have worked with us on some of these issues in the past.
Bryce
Aweseome, lots of good stuff here. On Feb 9 2019, at 1:48 am, Bryce Harrington <bryce@...2...> wrote:
- First, today we've gained one new Bronze Stylus sponsor, icons8.com.
Yay!
đ
- A second sponsor is in the works, we're just waiting on Conservancy for
processing, and should be annnounceable soon.
đđ
- I have sent out renewal reminders to our current sponsors that have hit
their expiration date. I figure we should give them a week to reply before retiring their entries from the sponsor page.
Thank you for sending out those notices. We might consider waiting a little longer than that, or at least take a rely as reason to give them longer. I know for many businesses the process of processing a payment and getting approved can take more than a week.
- Should we think about increasing our Bronze sponsorship level?
Today SFC told me that they don't like to bother invoicing amounts below $1000, which makes things a bit difficult if our Bronze sponsors want invoices. So moving Bronze to $1000 may make sense just for accounting purposes.
I think that makes sense. That would set our levels to: $1000 $2000 $5000 $10K
I really want to set them to $1250 and $2500 just so they're all even doubles, but that's probably why I'm an engineer and not in marketing đ
- Is it time to add a Diamond level?
When we set up the sponsorship levels, we originally included a Diamond level, but were not sure what amount it should be and decided we'd leave it out and revisit when it seemed plausible that we might get one. Given that we have two platinum sponsors currently, it seems plausible now. What do others think?
Frankly, I agree with your logic, but I'm still hesitant. Let's say that we created a Diamond at $25K and someone gave it to us. What would we do with it? I feel like with our current plans and spending we'd have a hard time using that money. So, let's brainstorm some big ideas and figure out reasonable ways we could grow and then put the funds behind that, instead of ending up with money and nothing to spend it on. (I feel like that was rambling a bit, but I can't figure out a way to be more concise. Hopefully I got my point across.)
- Do we want to increase other sponsorship levels?
I'm guessing no, but if the board thinks we should this might be a good time to do so. We may want to do some TBD grandfathering of existing sponsors.
I'm good with where they are (other than making it mathematically more exciting) but happy to listen to other's thoughts.
- In order to improve our tracking of sponsors a little, I've added a
private "Financial" sub-group to inkscape-board in gitlab, with a "sponsors" project under it:
https://gitlab.com/inkscape-board/financial/sponsors/issues I figure we can use the issues tracker with each issue used for a separate sponsor. I'm treating the issue description as a semi-structured data record in YAML format, in case some day we want to tack on tools or integrate with other stuff. For now though it'll just be maintained manually, but this should hopefully permit >1 bus factor on sponsor management.
Since Financial is a sub-group of the board, it is possible to add other highly trusted but non-board people to only this group. I've added Maren since due to her heavy involvement in sponsors and other financial matters in the past.
+1, thanks for setting this up!
- I have also added a Legal sub-group to inkscape-board, with a project
for focusing on branding issues like trademark infringement investigations. This is also a private group, so only visible to board members plus trusted non-board people. I've added Pamela Chestek and Denver Gingerich, who are Conservancy lawyers that have worked with us on some of these issues in the past.
+1, great! Ted
On Sat, Feb 09, 2019 at 03:35:50PM -0600, Ted Gould wrote:
Aweseome, lots of good stuff here. On Feb 9 2019, at 1:48 am, Bryce Harrington <bryce@...2...> wrote:
- First, today we've gained one new Bronze Stylus sponsor, icons8.com.
Yay!
đ
- A second sponsor is in the works, we're just waiting on Conservancy for
processing, and should be annnounceable soon.
đđ
- I have sent out renewal reminders to our current sponsors that have hit
their expiration date. I figure we should give them a week to reply before retiring their entries from the sponsor page.
Thank you for sending out those notices. We might consider waiting a little longer than that, or at least take a rely as reason to give them longer. I know for many businesses the process of processing a payment and getting approved can take more than a week.
I only expect an initial indication of interest in renewing within the week, you're right sometimes payment can take a while.
Also, even if the week passes, it doesn't mean that they can't renew later on, just that their logo won't be shown on the website in the interim.
- Should we think about increasing our Bronze sponsorship level?
Today SFC told me that they don't like to bother invoicing amounts below $1000, which makes things a bit difficult if our Bronze sponsors want invoices. So moving Bronze to $1000 may make sense just for accounting purposes.
I think that makes sense. That would set our levels to: $1000 $2000 $5000 $10K
I really want to set them to $1250 and $2500 just so they're all even doubles, but that's probably why I'm an engineer and not in marketing đ
Yeah no kidding. :-)
But these particular values line up well with other organization sponsorship levels, so at least will not be of surprise.
- Is it time to add a Diamond level?
When we set up the sponsorship levels, we originally included a Diamond level, but were not sure what amount it should be and decided we'd leave it out and revisit when it seemed plausible that we might get one. Given that we have two platinum sponsors currently, it seems plausible now. What do others think?
Frankly, I agree with your logic, but I'm still hesitant. Let's say that we created a Diamond at $25K and someone gave it to us. What would we do with it? I feel like with our current plans and spending we'd have a hard time using that money. So, let's brainstorm some big ideas and figure out reasonable ways we could grow and then put the funds behind that, instead of ending up with money and nothing to spend it on. (I feel like that was rambling a bit, but I can't figure out a way to be more concise. Hopefully I got my point across.)
We had $23,313 in expenses for FY2018, so we've kept the spending side up pretty well. That said, there's only so much hackfesting we can practically do in a given year, and you're right we should do some brainstorming.
Funded development work (e.g. contract programming work) would be a logical thing to think about, and several of our sponsors have expressed interest here in supplying additional funds depending on what we undertake. There's a non-trivial amount of overhead work needed for doing contract management, though.
It might be worthwhile for us to take a look at some of our peer projects at SFC and see how others are using their funding.
Bryce
On Feb 9 2019, at 4:26 pm, Bryce Harrington <bryce@...2...> wrote:
Funded development work (e.g. contract programming work) would be a logical thing to think about, and several of our sponsors have expressed interest here in supplying additional funds depending on what we undertake. There's a non-trivial amount of overhead work needed for doing contract management, though.
It might be worthwhile for us to take a look at some of our peer projects at SFC and see how others are using their funding.
I'm personally a fan of how the Document Foundation (Libre Office) has handled that in that they've got a policy against the foundation funding work on the project. Instead they fund infrastructure and the other stuff around the project. For instance, (and they have a bunch more money than us) they hired for some QA infrastructure work and for CI work and stuff like that. Where it was all things that make it easier to develop and work on the project. Another thing that Ryan and I were chatting about... I don't remember when.... was the idea that if we did instructional videos for using Inkscape that used professional actors and/or voice over. Something like that could provide some real sophistication to our materials. Anyway, all ideas. I guess where I see us is that we set ourselves up to start organizing the hackfests, and get funding for that, and I think we've done well there. We just need to figure out where the next step is. Ted
On Sat, Feb 09, 2019 at 09:19:10PM -0600, Ted Gould wrote:
On Feb 9 2019, at 4:26 pm, Bryce Harrington <bryce@...2...> wrote:
Funded development work (e.g. contract programming work) would be a logical thing to think about, and several of our sponsors have expressed interest here in supplying additional funds depending on what we undertake. There's a non-trivial amount of overhead work needed for doing contract management, though.
It might be worthwhile for us to take a look at some of our peer projects at SFC and see how others are using their funding.
I'm personally a fan of how the Document Foundation (Libre Office) has handled that in that they've got a policy against the foundation funding work on the project. Instead they fund infrastructure and the other stuff around the project. For instance, (and they have a bunch more money than us) they hired for some QA infrastructure work and for CI work and stuff like that. Where it was all things that make it easier to develop and work on the project.
Interesting, I wonder if they prohibit development funding because they have parter companies that provide employment for the developers? What about their approach are you finding admirable?
Blender is another peer project folks bring up a lot. They seem to have things extremely well organized, and I'm quite impressed with the quantity of recurring income they're getting:
I'd like to better understand how they've done this and how we might be able to replicate. It would be great if we could be looking to have 5-10 developers funded full time (plus the infrastructure and other stuff you mentioned.)
Another thing that Ryan and I were chatting about... I don't remember when.... was the idea that if we did instructional videos for using Inkscape that used professional actors and/or voice over. Something like that could provide some real sophistication to our materials.
I've added it to our fundrasing ideas page:
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Fundraising_Ideas#Instructional_Vide...
Tutorials given by professional artists or highly experience Inkscape users might also be something to consider. Andy Fitzsimon gave a really good presentation at the first LGM, and it was amazing, and inspiring.
Anyway, all ideas. I guess where I see us is that we set ourselves up to start organizing the hackfests, and get funding for that, and I think we've done well there. We just need to figure out where the next step is.
Sounds like maybe we need the corollary to the Fundraising Ideas page, but for expenditures.
Bryce
participants (2)
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Bryce Harrington -
Ted Gould