Re: How we can improve our fundraising efforts

[Oliver Propst <oliver propst gmail com>]

On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 11:13 AM, Allan Day <allanpday gmail com> wrote:
> Oliver Propst <oliver propst gmail com> wrote:
> > When we are doing a campaign we tend to be very focused on it (thus
> > busy), and not have the resources to focus on more long term planning.
> >
> > Thus its a a good time for us now to think about how we can improve
> > our fundraising efforts [1]. A great start is to learn how from how
> > other free/open source projects have conducted their fundraising
> > campings.
> ...
>
> Thanks for getting this started, Oliver. I've been thinking about this
> a bit myself recently, and I'd like to do some work on Friends of
> GNOME if I can find the time. I wanted to discuss it in a team
> meeting, but the mailing list works.
I have added this an agenda item for the upcoming Engagement Team
meeting set for next week [1]


> So, some general thoughts:
>
>  * One of my main issues with Friends of GNOME right now is that we
> don't do enough to engage with existing donors. If people donate, the
> least they should get back is regular updates about how we are
> spending their money. Right now, Friends of GNOME is a black hole -
> people make their donations and that's pretty much it. This is not an
> effective way to encourage people to keep donating or to get them to
> donate more (see below). One obvious thing we should be doing is
> sending regular updates to donors, probably as an email (I wonder if
> this could be tied in with the annual report somehow - eg. quarterly
> donor updates could be used as the basis for each annual report).
>
>  * We ought to be looking to existing donors as the potential source
> of additional cash. If someone is making a regular donation, the
> chances are that they will also be willing to donate to periodic fund
> raising campaigns. This is the way a lot of charities operate - once
> you are a donor they will contact you about their campaigns. One thing
> we need to do here is separate Friends of GNOME and our fund raising
> campaigns into different entities.
>
>  * It doesn't seem like the adopt a hacker postcards and the t-shirts
> are being tracked and distributed very effectively, and I'm not
> convinced that we have the administrative capacity to do a good job of
> these. I wonder if we should drop them in favour of other incentives
> that don't have the same administrative burden. Ideas: discount
> vouchers, vouchers to spend on GNOME merchandise, freebies at
> conferences, membership badges you can download and print at home.
>
>  * It's time to be thinking about another campaign. When that happens,
> we need to be certain that we will be able to use the money fairly
> quickly - this hasn't happened in the past, and that is potentially
> damaging. (Again, people need feedback about how their money is being
> spent, otherwise they might not donate again.) We should think about
> what we actually need money for, and I'd like the board to provide us
> with some advice here. There are outstanding sysadmin tasks, for
> example, like upgrading Bugzilla, or maybe we need to improve our
> infrastructure in some way.
>
>  * Aside from the funding campaigns, we don't actively promote or
> publicise Friends of GNOME. This is a basic error - we should be
> routinely inviting people to join, posting about the scheme, and
> advertising what we are doing with donations. This should be part of
> the Engagement Team's regular activities - not just when we happen to
> have a campaign running. A good way to start here would be to come up
> with a plan for what kinds of posts we should be making and how often
> we should be making them; this is something we can check ourselves
> against at each team meeting.
>
>  * It seems to me that the Foundation's money goes into a central pot
> - I don't get the impression that particular income is earmarked for
> specific uses. I wonder if the finances could/should be organised in
> such a way that we can definitely say where Friends of GNOME money is
> going, or even channel it to areas that we think are more interesting
> to donors. Again, that's something for the board.
>
>  * Finally, we need data about our existing donors. There needs to be
> a system where we have email and postal addresses so we can contact
> them. We need to know how much they donate and how long they have been
> members for. We need to know how many people are joining/leaving over
> time. We need to know why people are joining/leaving. This will
> require new infrastructure, and we need advice from the board about
> what is technically required and how we can get it.

These are all great points I agree with. We can elaborate more on how
to adress this at the next meeting.

1 https://mail.gnome.org/archives/engagement-list/2014-April/msg00054.html

-- 
-mvh Oliver Propst