Re: Friends of Eclipse

[Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>]

Hi,

sankarshan wrote:
> I am sorry I could not comprehend the question.

I think that Stormy was asking if you had ideas for what the student
option would be.

> What I intended to
> convey that perhaps the Marketing team could create a 10 USD
> contribution aimed at students.

What the Linux Foundation have done is "donate, and pick a student to
become a member for free". They're not reducing their prices, they're
running "2 for the price of 1" - a standard marketing trick.

This works nicely for the Linux Foundation, because they've negotiated
some nice partnership deals - members can get reduced price lenovo
laptops, for example - and membership includes some things which in
theory could be sought after (a Linux Foundation member email address,
for example).

> The usual question that crops up is
> "how do we know that they are students", I'd say that let's not care.

It is a fact that many people who want to give will give at the lowest
level available. If it's $25, they give $25. If you make it $10, they
will give $10. So you're reducing your revenue by doing this, because
the number of 25s that go to 10 will outweigh the number of people
giving 10 that wouldn't otherwise donate (IMHO).

If there are benefits to being a donor which don't cost us much, having
a "2 for the price of 1" deal gives added benefits to us too - adding
another contact to the university contacts the foundation has, growing
our advocate base, etc. And we don't lose any of the existing donors,
and we might gain some new ones.

> The only question is whether 10 USD would be an amount that would
> bring in a contribution after processing fees. I confess I am not sure
> about an answer to that.

In reality it's the smallest amount that is worth anything to us. After
fees we end up with maybe $8.50.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org