GNOME.org
 

Re: How we can improve our fundraising efforts

Karen Sandler <karen gnome org> wrote:
...

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).


I like the idea of a newsletter - the main thing is that we actually commit
to write something on a regular basis. Given how hard it was to get
quarterly reports together I think this is non-trivial.


Yes it's a challenge, but I really do think that it is essential. It's
really not cool to accept money from people and not keep them
informed.

I would at least like to have the conversation about how we can make
this happen, before we discard the possibility. We should look into
ways that we can be clever about generating the required content. For
example, we could:

 * Recycle material that we generate for news posts. eg. When we write
news posts about events, fundraising campaigns or releases, we could
repurpose the same copy for the newsletter, or generate emails from
them directly. "eg. GNOME 3.12 released today: thanks for helping!",
"Greetings from GUADEC", etc.
 * Recycle the copy from blog posts about events (from those who have
been sponsored).
 * Automatically sends emails to donors on the anniversary that they
started to donate. Maybe these could have a link to a page with
information about what we've been doing with the money.
 * Use the annual reports as a way to generate the copy. Each time we
write the report, we can have an article about Friends of GNOME which
can get turned into a newsletter.
 * Automatically contact donors if their direct debits stop coming in,
in some way. It could be a mistake or, if it is deliberate, we need to
find out why.


* 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.


Actually, thanks to Tobi, this has gotten much much better. Reminder emails
are reliably sent. I know that at least for the postcards I'm asked to send,
I get nagged periodically until they are sent (though I usually send them
right away - I swear!)


I think the issue is that it is failure-prone. Not everyone will send
them straight away. We just aren't going to send them on time, every
time - and when these items don't arrive on time, it can potentially
take the shine off the whole experience.

I've repeatedly heard complaints from people about late post cards or
t-shirts, or items that never arrived. Sometimes they complain
publicly - that isn't good. When something doesn't arrive, there's no
way to check on what's happening either - there's no easy way to check
if you're still a part of the scheme, whether we have the right postal
details, when the item was due to be sent, whether it has been sent,
etc.


* 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. I think this has benefited us in the past.


I like this a lot, but we should also consider that the campaigns are also a
way to state our ideals.


Yes, and I've been in favour of that in the past. My concern is that
we could end up making our values look hollow if we don't visibly
follow through on our promises. At the same time, direct, practical
goals can also be attractive for donors -  our sysadmin campaign was
very successful, for example - and if there are areas where we need
the money for something important, that seems like a valuable
contribution the Engagement Team could make.


Also, I
think maybe just keeping people posted about the plans would help. We don't
really have an informal way to communicate officially. The closest we have
is the GNOME Twitter feed, I guess, but there's nothing on the website where
we can post small updates and musings, etc.


I'd like to make gnome.org/news more informal - the main thing it
needs is to expose peoples' user accounts, so they can post as
themselves. We also need to encourage the Board of Directors to post
more about what they are doing. It's a shame that we the board doesn't
have a public face like this.


* 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.


The money technically goes into a single account but the funds are tracked.
For example, I'm pretty sure the GF is still spending down the Sysadmin FoG
campaign amounts.


Oh great! Those are details that I'm sure people would really like to
hear about.


* 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.


We started to implement CiviCRM, but there were a few reasons why this
wasn't a great solution for GF, including the fact that we have indefinite
donors. Tobi's scripts are capable of generating this data. For example, he
was able to generate a list of donors who had been giving for two years or
more. Perhaps it's not the most ideal solution but it's something and he's
surely work with us to create regular reporting scripts if we want them.


OK, it would be good to have a conversation about that. I wonder if
Tobi could join us for a meeting some time, or maybe I'll just ask him
when I see him next. :)

We also need to figure out a good way for the Engagement Team to get
access to the data when it is generated.

Allan
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