Re: recruiting sponsors

[Stormy Peters <stormy gnome org>]

I agree and I think there's two ways we could deal with this. I'm recommending the second.

1) Completely divorce adboard seats from money. Make the adboard by invite only. We would get/keep a lot of control but we would lose our leverage to raise money through the adboard. (Also, many of our supporters in companies use this as a way to convince their management that sponsoring the GNOME Foundation is a good thing. It gives them a seat on the adboard which enables them to work closely with the GNOME Foudnation and project.)

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
* monthly meetings with key contributors on product plans (kind of like our current monthly adboard meetings)
* annual face-to-face meetings with other advisory board members
* travel vouchers for x number of employees to attend GUADEC or hackfests
* hackfest sponsorship (would add $5K to the fee and would guarentee sponsorship of one)
* hackfest sponsorship opportunity (we'd invite them to sponsor them as they came up)
* GUADEC sponsorship 
* logo (in different sizes) on web site
* blurb on gnome.org website
* 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)
* ad on gnome.org website
* a mentor from the Board of Directors or community
* access to the GNOME Foundation Executive Director
* on-site presentations from key GNOME contributors (topics to be determined)
* presentation at GUADEC
* weekly updates on top bug
* others??

Packages could be targetted at:
* companies of less then 50 employees that have GNOME developers on staff
* companies of less than 50 employees that use GNOME products
* companies that use GNOME products
* companies that ship products that include GNOME, but they don't work on them (think of companies that distribute Linux on their hardware)
* ...

We could package them into something like the following:
* Associate sponsor
  * targetted at companies of less then 50 employees that have GNOME developers on staff
  * includes:
    * adboard seat
    * 200x200 logo on ...
    * ...

Stormy

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 11:23 AM, Alberto Ruiz <aruiz gnome org> wrote:

2009/5/26 Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>:
> Hi,

>
> There's a trade-off here:
>  * We want an influential advisory board with big supporters of GNOME
>  * We want more money
>
> Currently, we have the influential advisory board, and all the members (with
> the possible exception of Google, SFLC) are involved in distributing or
> developing GNOME and the GNOME platform. We don't want to lose that, but we
> want to increase funds available. One possible way is to increase how much
> we receive for the advisory board dues from each member. Another way to
> raise more money is to have a corporate sponsorship program where people get
> a reward for giving a certain amount of money. But I think it's vital to
> keep the two absolutely, and completely, separate.

Totally agree. I don't think it's worth populating the AdBoard with
companies/orgs that cannot add value. But still, I know organizations
that would be happy to just be part of the foundation as a bare
marketing thing or a way to pay back what they get out of the project
with no intents at all of being part of the adboard.

--
Cheers,
Alberto Ruiz

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