Re: How we can improve our fundraising efforts

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Hi all,

I've been distracted with trips recently, but I had chance to discuss
Friends of GNOME with Tobi during GNOME.Asia. I think we can try and
turn this discussion into a set of more realistic actions.

First, when it comes to sending updates to existing donors, it would
make sense to tie this in with events where we are already generating
material. The two main opportunities I see here are releases and
GUADEC. For releases, we can send out a mail on release day, thanking
donors and pointing to the release notes. This will hopefully make
them feel like they have contributed to our achievements. For GUADEC,
I think it would be a good idea to take a photo of everyone who was
sponsored to attend (this should be easy enough to do when we take the
group picture). We can then mail this to donors along with some thank
you text.

Other actions to consider:

* Come up with a pretty HTML design for Friends of GNOME emails.
* Review whether we want to continue sending gifts.
* Review existing email texts. See .txt files here -
http://hg.cryptobitch.de/gnome-paypal/file/8a05cdc4f90d
* Set up an automated thank you email, to be sent on the anniversary
that the account was set up.
* Split out one time donations and campaigns from Friends of GNOME:
update the website [1], create new emails. When we run a campaign,
send an email advertising it to Friends of GNOME members.
* Promote Friends of GNOME using social media: come up with a list of
post topics, decide on a schedule to send them out, recruit volunteers
to write them.

Maybe we can go over this list at a future meeting.

Allan

[1] Some basic "schematic" mockups -
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5031519/friends-of-gnome/web-pages.png