Re: advisory board fees

[Claus Schwarm <clschwarm googlemail com>]

On Tue, 2009-08-11 at 18:38 -0600, Stormy Peters wrote:
> Hi GNOME Marketing Team,
> 
> At the Advisory Board meeting at GUADEC we discussed raising advisory
> board fees. I took the action item to discuss it with this list and to
> come up with some messaging for existing advisory board members.
> 
> I'd welcome any and all feedback on how best to explain and portray
> this to existing advisory board members.


I don't have all the necessary facts, but I'd probably frame it this way
(the ? indicates where you'd need a find an appropriate word to describe
the facts):

1.) We'd like to be able to ...

    * employ a sysadmin.
    * establish a regular (?), reliable (?) schedule for hackfests.

2.) These are good ideas, because ...

    * GNOME's popularity and the size of its community depends on
integrated and running web infrastructure. There are some efforts
underway to make this happen, for example, ... (insert list of planned
sysadmin activities here.) This is a lot to do, which is why we need a
regular sysadmin.
    * Hackfests are one of the key ways we get great things done.
(Insert success stories here). In the following year, we planned to care
about (insert list of plans here). We need to make sure the income we
can count on can support key hackfests without additional money.

3.) We did our part on making this happen:

    * We raised money in other ways, like Friends of GNOME which has
raised $20,000 this year! (a comparison to the previous year would be
nice here.)
    * We've signed up 3 new sponsors. Given the current economy, that
was a great result. It's reasonable to assume to pick up some more when
the economy gets better, again.
    * We established (?) a travel committee, which greatly improved the
GNOME Foundation's efficiency in sponsoring travel. By organizing
lodging as well as approving airfare, they were able to substantially
increase the number of people who received travel assistance. For GUADEC
2009 they managed travel assistance for 39 people for $31,838. Compare
that to 36 people for $41,000 in 2008.

4.) However, it turned out to be insufficient.

5.) Thus, we ask you to consider to raise your support (by accepting (?)
a raise in advisory board members fees):

    * After all, advisory board fees have been steady for 10 years.
Inflation, the value of the dollar and the economy have all changed
during that time. ($10,000 in 1999 is only $7892 in today's dollars.)
    * And you will profit from these plan, too. After all, (link reasons
from (2) to advisory board member's interests here).


Best regards,
Claus