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.
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.
Karen Sandler <karen gnome org> wrote:
...
>> So, some general thoughts:Yes it's a challenge, but I really do think that it is essential. It's
>>
>> * 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.
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.
I think the issue is that it is failure-prone. Not everyone will send
>> * 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!)
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.
>> infrastructure in some way. I think this has benefited us in the past.
>> * 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
>Yes, and I've been in favour of that in the past. My concern is that
> I like this a lot, but we should also consider that the campaigns are also a
> way to state our ideals.
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.
I'd like to make gnome.org/news more informal - the main thing it
> 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.
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.
Oh great! Those are details that I'm sure people would really like to
>> * 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.
hear about.
OK, it would be good to have a conversation about that. I wonder if
>> * 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.
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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