Re: GNOME Corporate Sponsor Brainstorming

[Brian Cameron <brian cameron oracle com>]

Paul:

Thanks for bringing this up.  The sooner we figure out what we are
doing, the sooner we can stop turning away people wanting to give us
money.  ;)

> The board has been talking for a while, and companies have asked for,
> other ways to sponsor GNOME outside of the Advisory Board.  Diego
> kicked off a discussion on the marketing list about a year ago, but I
> wasn't able to quickly find the email.

I think you mean this one:

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/marketing-list/2010-June/msg00001.html

Diego had some good ideas brewing.

> First, some background:  the GNOME Advisory Board[1] is made up of
> partners and sponsors who help sponsor GNOME financially.
>
> * Companies with more than 50 employees:  $20,000 / year
> * Companies with less than 50 employees:  $10,000 / year
> * Non-profits: $0

I wonder if it might be good to expand the definition of "Non-profits"
a bit.  The term "Non-profit" means different things in different
countries.  Perhaps we could expand this to more clearly include
charities and other types of organizations focused on providing
services to people in a charitable manner.

> We would like to expand corporate sponsorships but we don't want to
> lessen the benefits for the Advisory Board partners.  The major
> benefits to being on the Advisory Board are monthly Advisory Board
> calls with other members and the Foundation's board of directors and
> an annual meeting at GUADEC.  (I'm not sure if the ED does anything
> above and beyond other than normal and expected communication).  We've
> also had feedback from potential partners asking for smaller ways to
> give.
>
> I'd like to get the community's feedback on two additional potential levels:
>
> Level 1:  $1000 / year
> Benefits: Logo added to foundation.gnome.org - This will be available
> to companies to show they sponsor GNOME financially - some companies
> like the validation to help show potential clients.

I think this is a good start, but I think it would be better to do more.
A logo exchange on fdo alone seems a bit anemic to me.

It seems that companies and other organizations are interested in giving
us money for logo placement.  I think we could offer more visibility for
their logos based on how much money they provide:

- On foundation.gnome.org
- On Friends of GNOME
- On gnome.org
- Their logo placed somewhere at a certain # of events, or at a
  particular event.
- Their logo placed in a way that associates them with a particular
  sub-group, such as a11y or Womens Outreach.
- Logo placement in a regular publication, perhaps GNOME Journal
  could have a sponsors "page".
- Perhaps association with a particular GNOME release.

And it seems we could require higher donations for more or better
visibility.  It would be nice to see more options like this.  It seems
little work on our part if we can figure out how to organize the website
to accommodate pages with logos for organizations that we acknowledge as
sponsors.

It might be tricky to manage how to best promote or endorse
organizations in this sort of way.  I can imagine RMS having issues with
promoting Open Source related organizations if done at the expense of
promoting free software, for example.

But, I'd think we could address these concerns by setting up the program
properly so we make sure that it is clear that we are not necessarily
endorsing organizations who we acknowledge are providing donations.

> Level 2: $5000 / year
> Benefits:  Logo added to foundation.gnome.org and quarterly one on one
> call with the Executive Director.  Same as above and an opportunity to
> share feedback with GNOME's CEO.

I think it is valuable to have an option like this, but I'd expect
that most organizations would fall into category #1 above, and not
really want this sort of access to the foundation.

I think a third category is also really needed.  It would be nice if
there were a small donation fee (perhaps $200) that individual GNOME
consultants or small consulting firms could pay in order to get
themselves advertised on the GNOME website as being consulting
contacts.  I think this would appeal to many coders for hire out
there, and would be a way for them to increase their relationship
with GNOME directly.

> While the benefits may not seem like much to some, it's a way for
> companies to give and show they are a part of the community.  We'd
> have to come up with naming conventions for the other levels.

Why can't we do something similar like how FoG already works, but
with different benefits for each level.  The terms "Associate",
"Sponsor" and "Philanthropist" seem fine.  We could just have
"Individual Associate/Sponsor/Philanthropist" and
"Organization Associate/Sponsor/Philanthropist".  No?

> Lastly, as part of this, I'd like to revamp the foundation.gnome.org
> website for both these kind of corporate sponsors as well as those who
> have donated hardware to the Foundation, such as a potential offer for
> a new event box, Red Hat and Canonical for hosting our servers in
> their data centers and other things that are in the works.

Yes, it would be good to better thank those sponsors we have for all
that they do.  Do you anticipate the revamp will be to involve adding
more thank you information, or also improving how the pages look?

Brian