Re: Questions for the candidates: finances

[Marina Zhurakhinskaya <marinaz redhat com>]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jim Nelson" <jim yorba org>
> To: "Foundation List" <foundation-list gnome org>
> Sent: Monday, May 19, 2014 2:19:37 PM
> Subject: Questions for the candidates: finances
>
> Hello everyone,
>
> First, I'd like to voice my support for Dave Neary's question. I also believe
> finding an executive director may be the most important task for the
> incoming board.
>
> From some earlier discussion it sounds like the other defining task will be
> stabilizing GNOME's finances. Others have asked questions about improving
> the foundation's financial situation, but almost every response is about
> locating more corporate sponsorship and increasing personal donations. My
> concern is that those paths are well-trod and potentially lean, and that
> novel ways of financing should be explored. At least one candidate (Emily
> Gonyer) stated a desire to ween GNOME off of corporate sponsorship.
>
> My questions for the candidates is:
>
> Aside from corporate sponsorship and personal donations, what area(s) would
> you investigate to increase and stabilize GNOME's finances? (Or do you feel
> these two methods are the only or best way to achieve this goal?)

I think we can do more with organization sponsorship and individual donations than we are doing right now. We 
have a product that is naturally of interest to a lot of consumers and corporate users, and of interest to 
hardware and application developers to be compatible with. We also have technology that is of interest to 
people to build their own products with or create services around. When it became known that the GNOME 
Foundation was in a difficult financial situation, we received an unprecedented number of individual 
donations. These were previously untapped donors who are very supportive of GNOME. I think we should aim to 
increase how much we get in private donations, and we can do that by reporting to our donors how their money 
is being used and having yearly fundraising campaigns. We need to dedicate our fundraising energy to these 
two sources because they are complimentary to the goals we have for advancing our technology. As a 
Foundation, even with an ED, we have limited resources, so we need to consider how to allocate them most 
effectively.

I'd like to share a great article about fundraising by the Ada Initiative founders which has informed some of 
my views on it.
http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-ada-initiative-founders-on-funding-activism-for-women-in-open-source

Thanks,
Marina

> -- Jim
>
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