Re: advisory board fees

[Claus Schwarm <clschwarm googlemail com>]

Very good! It feels hard to say no after reading it.

Just a few minor points you may like to consider:

(1) "we were unable to do any of the ones we had planned for the first
half of the year."

This sounds active and we're admitting inability. Maybe, that's a
correct description but there's no need to make it obvious. ;-)

What about: "we had to cancel the ones we had planned for the first half
of the year"?

(2) "We need to make sure the income we can count on can support a few
key hackfests without additional money."

I needed to read this twice.

What about: "We need to secure reliable budgets for a few important
hackfests"?

You may also like to mention "open source" in addition to "free
software".

Also, the project names may be a little bit cryptic for some members of
the Advisory Board. After all, they have lots of stuff to do, I suppose,
and some of them may not be able to keep up with all the on-going
developments in the community.


Best regards,
Claus


On Tue, 2009-08-25 at 09:28 -0600, Stormy Peters wrote:
> How about this? Feedback is welcome
> 
> Subject: GNOME Foundation 2010 Donations (income? fees?)
> 
> GNOME Advisory Board Members,
> 
> 2010 will be a key year for the GNOME Foundation with the release of
> GNOME 3.0. We'd like to make sure we have sufficient income to hold
> several key hackfests and to support a small staff. In order to do
> this, we need your help.
> 
> In 2010, we'd like to have:
>       * A small staff that enables the community to be effective. We
>         believe the minimum staff to keep everything running most
>         effectively is an executive director, part time administrative
>         assistant and a system administrator. These staff skills will
>         complement and enable our community of GNOME contributors.
>         Having contributors who are excellent hackers, artists and
>         documentation writers take time off to do system
>         administration work or reimburse travel expenses is not the
>         most effective use of our resources.
>       * Establish a regular and reliable schedule for hackfests, as
>         these are essential for getting past roadblocks and getting
>         new initiatives going, such as GNOME 3.0! In 2009 we had plans
>         for many key hackfests and due to the economy and the way we
>         had fundraising set up, we were unable to do any of the ones
>         we had planned for the first half of the year.
> Maintaining a small staff and a regular schedule of key hackfests will
> enable us to:
>       * Recruit and integrate new contributors quickly. 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, we are updating our
>         web site to more easily enable contributions from more
>         people,upgrading bugzilla to improve everyone's working speed
>         and we are adding a CRM system. This is a lot to do, which is
>         why we need a regular system administrator who can ensure that
>         existing contributors work effectively and new contributors
>         come up to speed quickly.
>       * Hackfests are one of the key ways we get great things done.
>         GNOME 3.0 was started at the usability hackfest at last year's
>         Boston Summit. The GTK hackfest made tremendous progress last
>         year and the documentation hackfest this year not only
>         improved Mallard but set an example for other free software
>         projects. In the following year, we would like to have
>         hackfests for GNOME 3.0 usability, user deployment,
>         accessibility, Zeitgeist and marketing. We need to make sure
>         the income we can count on can support a few key hackfests
>         without additional money. 
> We have worked on making this plan a reality by raising more money and
> spending the money we have more effectively. For example:
> 
>       * We raised money in new ways, like Friends of GNOME which has
>         raised $20,000 this year! (This is up 312% from last year when
>         we raised only from $6400 over the whole year.)
>       * 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 improves. 
>       * We established a travel committee, which greatly improved the
>         GNOME Foundation's efficiency in sponsoring travel. By
>         organizing lodging as well as approving airfare, the travel
>         committee was 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.
> While all this has helped us, it has turned out to be insufficient to
> accomplish our basic plans for staffing and hackfests. Thus, we ask
> you to consider to raise your support by accepting a raise in advisory
> board members fees.
> 
>       * 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 when the GNOME Foundation
>         first started is only $7,892 in today's dollars.)
>       * You, as companies vested in the interest of GNOME, will profit
>         from these plan, too. All the companies in our community will
>         benefit from a better system administration structure that
>         enables new members to join quickly as well as existing
>         members to function most effectively. You will also benefit
>         from usability and accessibility hackfests that affect GNOME
>         3.0 projects. Any marketing effort the GNOME Foundation does
>         for the free desktop will help all of the companies that
>         currently use and deploy GNOME technologies.
>       * Many of you support us throughout the year, but in a year with
>         a weak economy it's hard to keep up those donations throughout
>         the year. While we hope that you'll continue to support us
>         throughout the year, by having a larger annual donation up
>         front, we hope to have more reliability.
> In 2010 we'll be asking all large advisory board companies to support
> the GNOME Foundation with $20,000 and smaller companies with $10,000.
> While we realize this is a big increase, we think overall the
> additional money will help our community of 400+ Foundation members to
> make a much bigger impact in the world of free software and the GNOME
> desktop.
> 
> Thanks in advance for supporting our 2010 initiatives.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Stormy
> 
> On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 3:42 AM, Claus Schwarm
> <clschwarm googlemail com> wrote:
>         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
>         
>