[OSGeo-Board] Fund raising

[Gary Lang]

It makes total sense to attribute some value to the foundation in this
manner.

I'd like to get a broad view on what the right amount of "overhead" is,
as this was expressed as a key concern by the community. If 1/3 is
standard, then great. I have no idea. DanielB - any background you can
share?

Gary 

-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Warmerdam [mailto:fwarmerdam at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Frank
Warmerdam (External)
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 7:45 AM
To: board at board.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Board] Fund raising

Arnulf Christl (CCGIS) wrote:
>> Thought I'd pass this along. This is a page from OpenOffice for 
>> donating funds to OpenOffice.
>>
>> http://contributing.openoffice.org/donate.html
>>
>> Daniel Brookshier
> 
> I think that we need to address this topic with great care as we are 
> in a different position than a single project or a set of projects 
> that have already grown together for some time. For the time being 
> some OSGeo projects compete for the same customers and in many cases 
> companies are tied very much to *one* (*their*) software package. We 
> should give this a good thought before thinking about how to 
> distribute seomething we don't even yet have.

Arnulf,

Dealing with this reality was part of the rationale for my concept of
foundation sponsors being able to identify one or more projects that
they wish to support.  In this situation 2/3 of their sponsorship goes
into a fund for the exclusive use of that project, while the remainder
is available for general foundation overhead.

In this situation, the foundation would not normally direct general
foundation money to paying for development of a particular project.
Instead general foundation funds would be directed to supporting common
project infrastructure, admin and legal support, paying for a community
manager or executive director, overall promotional efforts, various
kinds of outreach and so forth.

This way sponsors can ensure their support is mostly directed to a
particular project if they wish, and projects don't need to feel that
"their sponsors" money is being wasted on some other quixotic or
competing project.

Based on this scenario it benefits the foundation to attract projects
which are likely to attract sponsorship funds.

Note that none of the above precludes projects getting their own funding
as they do now.

I really like the part on the OpenOffice.org page that says "We strongly
prefer that people become contributors."  That is, contributions in kind
(programming, documentation, user support, outreach, bug isolation, etc)
is often much better than cash donations.  Certainly it is my hope that
volunteering will be the main form of individual contribution.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------
---------------------------------------+------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam,
warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: board-unsubscribe at board.osgeo.org For additional
commands, e-mail: board-help at board.osgeo.org