Re: Premium sponsor ship offerings [WAS Re: recruiting sponsors]

[Stormy Peters <stormy gnome org>]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 2:28 PM, Jaap A. Haitsma <jaap haitsma org> wrote:

Hi Stormy,

I like this idea of having "Premium GNOME Foundations sponsorship"
In my opinion it would be best to have this as an extra option for companies

I'd start with revising the standard sponsorship fees by having more
levels depending on company size
1000$ < 10 employees
2500$ < 25 employees
5000$ < 100 employees
10000$ < 1000 employees
20000$ > 1000 employees

I think this is complicated. I think just 2-3 options is much simplier.

"Premium sponsorship" would be something you pay on top of that
There are basically two options
1) Fixed amount of say 10K$. This seems a bit unfair for small
companies, but also sponsorship of conferences etc. do not look at the
size of the company if you want to be gold, silver or bronze sponsor.

When sponsoring a conference they all get the same amount of benefit in advertising regardless of how big they are. Often concessions are made for the type of company (nonprofit, profit, etc) rather than the size of the company.

Also if we decide to give "Premium sponsor" something that costs
dollars we need to make sure that the extra premium fee covers this.
Another argument for a fixed fee that is not too low is that Premium
sponsorship  should also be really a Premium. If everybody takes it
it's standard not premium

No, the whole idea is that premium is a way to charge more in one fee. I saw it more to simplify the approval process within the company.

2) A percentage of the normal fee (let's say 100%). That would mean
that companies over 1000 employees would pay 20K on top of the 20K
they already pay for the normal fee. The change from 10K to 40K seems
a bit steep to me, but you don't have to become a premium sponsor if
you don't want to. Furthermore it could be the case that if we get
manyPremium sponsors that are companies of less than 10 people,
because for them it's just 1000$ to become a premium

I think that's too complicated.

I'm leaning towards a fixed Premium of 10K$, but if others have
convincing arguments to do it differently I'm all open for it

We currently charge $10K. I wouldn't think we'd charge a "premium" fee but rather have a premium package that includes all the normal things and then some.

Some more inline comments about ideas for the package below.

>
> 2) Create a set of GNOME Foundation sponsorship offerings. I recently worked
> with one of our sponsors to create a "Premium GNOME Foundation sponsorship"
> which included an adboard seat (that they already had) and GUADEC
> sponsorship. While the end amounts ended up being the same, it was easier
> for them to get internal approval for the package deal.
>
> So we could identify all the different benefits and package them up.
> Different packages could be targetted at different types and sizes of
> companies with advisory board seats being in packages targetting companies
> closely involved with GNOME products. (And we can always make exceptions.)
>
> Here's some of the benefits we could offer: (in return for a specified
> donation)
> * advisory board seat

Should not be automatically the case in my opinion, but we could make
it a pre requisite (at least for new adboard members)

If it's a prereq, how do they get it? We could also customize the option for each sponsor. So the web page could say "advisory board seat (requires approval or upon invitation)

> * monthly meetings with key contributors on product plans (kind of like our
> current monthly adboard meetings)

I have my doubts if the sponsors are interested in this, and might
also be not that easy to setup

They would be! We have monthly meetings now and the most well attended are the product related ones.

> * annual face-to-face meetings with other advisory board members

Probably best to do something around GUADEC. You invite them a day
earlier (travel on their own cost) and have a meeting plus dinner
(dinner on cost of the foundation). Furthermore you can explain them
what the foundation has been doing and what the plans are. Furthermore
you could have some key contributors present explaining directions and
to whom the sponsors can ask questions.

We do this now. I was just trying to enumerate all the things we do ...

> * travel vouchers for x number of employees to attend GUADEC or hackfests

I don't see why we would ask them for sponsoring if afterwards we give
the money (or at least a signifcant part of it) back

Again, it's packaging. The team that is sponsoring the GNOME Foundation might have a fixed budget that includes a certain amount of money for travel. Having open source developers that might typically need to travel more than regular proprietary software developers is often a strain on their regular travel budget and requires special approval. Enabling them to lump some of the costs of their open source developers travel into their sponsorship might be a benefit to them. (And if they don't take advantage of it, we can use the money for others' travel.)

> * hackfest sponsorship (would add $5K to the fee and would guarentee
> sponsorship of one)

Good idea

> * hackfest sponsorship opportunity (we'd invite them to sponsor them as they
> came up)

> * GUADEC sponsorship
I think it's best to organize big events like this seperate and work
with seperate sponsors. I think it has worked out so far. Furthermore
leaving it as is gives you more flexibility if you want to organize
guadec together with akademy

The reason I thought of this is because someone needed a premium sponsorship to include GUADEC. Again, it's about getting approval and it's easier to get approval once internally for one thing than to have to go back for all the line items.

We'll have to see in the report, but I think most companies gave the same amount they would have given if it was just GUADEC - I'm not sure we made twice as much by combining the conferences. Not to say there aren't other benefits ...

> * logo (in different sizes) on web site
Should be for every sponsor. Premium sponsors at the top

Someone had suggested another project that gave different sizes depending on how much was donated ... I thought htat was a good idea if we could make it look good.

> * blurb on gnome.org website
I suggest we have a tab saying sponsors on gnome.org site which lists
all sponsors and why they sponsor GNOME

And I have that on my todo list.

> * interview of company employee on planet gnome
> * interview of company employee in GNOME Journal
> * GNOME related article in GNOME Journal (cannot be an ad, topic must be
> pre-approved)

Good idea


> * ad on gnome.org website
I think that's covered with the sponsorship page

This could be an additional thing ... if we wanted to sell it. I meant the home page, not the sponsorship page.

> * a mentor from the Board of Directors or community
Could be an option if they want it.

> * access to the GNOME Foundation Executive Director
Don't they have this already?

You should always tell people what they are getting so they can see all the things they get. :)

> * on-site presentations from key GNOME contributors (topics to be
> determined)
If they are willing to pay travel+lodging I think it's not too
difficult to find volunteers

Or we need to charge enough that we can pay for travel and lodging. It's difficult for many companies to get approval to pay for external people's travel.

> * presentation at GUADEC
Can't everybody already do that if they have the right topic

We could have a sponsor track and guarentee them a slot. We would then of course work with them to make sure they were presenting something interesting - which they would want to do.

> * weekly updates on top bug
They can already subscribe to bugzilla

And if I could tell you all the people that think their bug in bugzilla is being ignored ... including people in sponsoring companies.

> * others??

To summarize my thoughts on "Premium sponsorship" are the following
Cost: Extra 10K$ per year
Perks:
1) One sponsored hackfest of 5K$
2) Yearly meeting at GUADEC as I described above
3) At the top of the sponsor ship page
4) Can publish pre approved articles on GNOME news
5) Ability to have interviews placed on planet gnome or GNOME news

I think we need to list as many perks as possible. This is a subset of what I suggested. Did you have more to add?

Stormy

Any comments?


Jaap