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Re: advisory board fees

Very good! It feels hard to say no after reading it.

Just a few minor points you may like to consider:

(1) "we were unable to do any of the ones we had planned for the first
half of the year."

This sounds active and we're admitting inability. Maybe, that's a
correct description but there's no need to make it obvious. ;-)

What about: "we had to cancel the ones we had planned for the first half
of the year"?

(2) "We need to make sure the income we can count on can support a few
key hackfests without additional money."

I needed to read this twice.

What about: "We need to secure reliable budgets for a few important
hackfests"?

You may also like to mention "open source" in addition to "free
software".

Also, the project names may be a little bit cryptic for some members of
the Advisory Board. After all, they have lots of stuff to do, I suppose,
and some of them may not be able to keep up with all the on-going
developments in the community.


Best regards,
Claus


On Tue, 2009-08-25 at 09:28 -0600, Stormy Peters wrote:

How about this? Feedback is welcome

Subject: GNOME Foundation 2010 Donations (income? fees?)

GNOME Advisory Board Members,

2010 will be a key year for the GNOME Foundation with the release of
GNOME 3.0. We'd like to make sure we have sufficient income to hold
several key hackfests and to support a small staff. In order to do
this, we need your help.

In 2010, we'd like to have:
      * A small staff that enables the community to be effective. We
        believe the minimum staff to keep everything running most
        effectively is an executive director, part time administrative
        assistant and a system administrator. These staff skills will
        complement and enable our community of GNOME contributors.
        Having contributors who are excellent hackers, artists and
        documentation writers take time off to do system
        administration work or reimburse travel expenses is not the
        most effective use of our resources.
      * Establish a regular and reliable schedule for hackfests, as
        these are essential for getting past roadblocks and getting
        new initiatives going, such as GNOME 3.0! In 2009 we had plans
        for many key hackfests and due to the economy and the way we
        had fundraising set up, we were unable to do any of the ones
        we had planned for the first half of the year.
Maintaining a small staff and a regular schedule of key hackfests will
enable us to:
      * Recruit and integrate new contributors quickly. GNOME's
        popularity and the size of its community depends on integrated
        and running web infrastructure. There are some efforts
        underway to make this happen, for example, we are updating our
        web site to more easily enable contributions from more
        people,upgrading bugzilla to improve everyone's working speed
        and we are adding a CRM system. This is a lot to do, which is
        why we need a regular system administrator who can ensure that
        existing contributors work effectively and new contributors
        come up to speed quickly.
      * Hackfests are one of the key ways we get great things done.
        GNOME 3.0 was started at the usability hackfest at last year's
        Boston Summit. The GTK hackfest made tremendous progress last
        year and the documentation hackfest this year not only
        improved Mallard but set an example for other free software
        projects. In the following year, we would like to have
        hackfests for GNOME 3.0 usability, user deployment,
        accessibility, Zeitgeist and marketing. We need to make sure
        the income we can count on can support a few key hackfests
        without additional money. 
We have worked on making this plan a reality by raising more money and
spending the money we have more effectively. For example:

      * We raised money in new ways, like Friends of GNOME which has
        raised $20,000 this year! (This is up 312% from last year when
        we raised only from $6400 over the whole year.)
      * We've signed up 3 new sponsors. Given the current economy,
        that was a great result. It's reasonable to assume to pick up
        some more when the economy improves. 
      * We established a travel committee, which greatly improved the
        GNOME Foundation's efficiency in sponsoring travel. By
        organizing lodging as well as approving airfare, the travel
        committee was able to substantially increase the number of
        people who received travel assistance. For GUADEC 2009 they
        managed travel assistance for 39 people for $31,838. Compare
        that to 36 people for $41,000 in 2008.
While all this has helped us, it has turned out to be insufficient to
accomplish our basic plans for staffing and hackfests. Thus, we ask
you to consider to raise your support by accepting a raise in advisory
board members fees.

      * Advisory board fees have been steady for 10 years. Inflation,
        the value of the dollar and the economy have all changed
        during that time. ($10,000 in 1999 when the GNOME Foundation
        first started is only $7,892 in today's dollars.)
      * You, as companies vested in the interest of GNOME, will profit
        from these plan, too. All the companies in our community will
        benefit from a better system administration structure that
        enables new members to join quickly as well as existing
        members to function most effectively. You will also benefit
        from usability and accessibility hackfests that affect GNOME
        3.0 projects. Any marketing effort the GNOME Foundation does
        for the free desktop will help all of the companies that
        currently use and deploy GNOME technologies.
      * Many of you support us throughout the year, but in a year with
        a weak economy it's hard to keep up those donations throughout
        the year. While we hope that you'll continue to support us
        throughout the year, by having a larger annual donation up
        front, we hope to have more reliability.
In 2010 we'll be asking all large advisory board companies to support
the GNOME Foundation with $20,000 and smaller companies with $10,000.
While we realize this is a big increase, we think overall the
additional money will help our community of 400+ Foundation members to
make a much bigger impact in the world of free software and the GNOME
desktop.

Thanks in advance for supporting our 2010 initiatives.

Best,

Stormy

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 3:42 AM, Claus Schwarm
<clschwarm googlemail com> wrote:
        On Tue, 2009-08-11 at 18:38 -0600, Stormy Peters wrote:
        > Hi GNOME Marketing Team,
        >
        > At the Advisory Board meeting at GUADEC we discussed raising
        advisory
        > board fees. I took the action item to discuss it with this
        list and to
        > come up with some messaging for existing advisory board
        members.
        >
        > I'd welcome any and all feedback on how best to explain and
        portray
        > this to existing advisory board members.
        
        
        
        I don't have all the necessary facts, but I'd probably frame
        it this way
        (the ? indicates where you'd need a find an appropriate word
        to describe
        the facts):
        
        1.) We'd like to be able to ...
        
           * employ a sysadmin.
           * establish a regular (?), reliable (?) schedule for
        hackfests.
        
        2.) These are good ideas, because ...
        
           * GNOME's popularity and the size of its community depends
        on
        integrated and running web infrastructure. There are some
        efforts
        underway to make this happen, for example, ... (insert list of
        planned
        sysadmin activities here.) This is a lot to do, which is why
        we need a
        regular sysadmin.
           * Hackfests are one of the key ways we get great things
        done.
        (Insert success stories here). In the following year, we
        planned to care
        about (insert list of plans here). We need to make sure the
        income we
        can count on can support key hackfests without additional
        money.
        
        
        3.) We did our part on making this happen:
        
           * We raised money in other ways, like Friends of GNOME
        which has
        raised $20,000 this year! (a comparison to the previous year
        would be
        nice here.)
           * We've signed up 3 new sponsors. Given the current
        economy, that
        was a great result. It's reasonable to assume to pick up some
        more when
        the economy gets better, again.
           * We established (?) a travel committee, which greatly
        improved the
        GNOME Foundation's efficiency in sponsoring travel. By
        organizing
        lodging as well as approving airfare, they were able to
        substantially
        increase the number of people who received travel assistance.
        For GUADEC
        2009 they managed travel assistance for 39 people for $31,838.
        Compare
        that to 36 people for $41,000 in 2008.
        
        
        4.) However, it turned out to be insufficient.
        
        5.) Thus, we ask you to consider to raise your support (by
        accepting (?)
        a raise in advisory board members fees):
        
           * After all, advisory board fees have been steady for 10
        years.
        Inflation, the value of the dollar and the economy have all
        changed
        during that time. ($10,000 in 1999 is only $7892 in today's
        dollars.)
        
           * And you will profit from these plan, too. After all,
        (link reasons
        from (2) to advisory board member's interests here).
        
        
        Best regards,
        Claus
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