[Fundraising] Prospects of fundraising for an Exec Director...

[Dave McIlhagga]

Hi Jo,

Thanks for your thoughts. I don't want to take anything away from what 
you have written below -- at the end of the day, this whole initiative 
is going to work due to contributed efforts on the part of many people, 
either through commitments on the parts of employers, or through 
personal volunteer time. This is precisely how all of the projects in 
OSGeo have reached their success to date.

Having said this -- I don't think the issue that we face at the moment 
is a lack of willingness to contribute energies to OSGeo - there is 
plenty of energy to help. Just look at the Where 2.0 booth to get 
evidence of this.


The issue is one of coordination / management of what we are trying to 
achieve. Let me provide one simple example that might help to explain 
what we're missing.

One of the areas I think I can help OSGeo out a lot with is Fundraising. 
I am more than happy to give presentations, and 'make the pitch' to 
organizations of all stripes, from governments to private sector, who 
have an interest in seeing OSGeo succeed. This is a significant way 
I/Dave can contribute to OSGeo.

The problem is, making this pitch requires really good quality material 
and information about OSGeo. We have to have a solid 'business case' to 
present to organizations in order to get their buy-in. But this requires 
knowledge about what we are achieving or planning to achieve in the 
various committees at OSGeo, general status of initiatives, etc.. not to 
mention design/print of packages, and running a sponsorship program with 
potentially various levels of sponsorship and benefits for the organization.

As a part-time volunteer individual - it's impossible for me to have a 
really good handle on all of this -- and even if I miraculously did - 
and someone actually agreed to support us -- how would we actually work 
with the sponsor to deliver the goods? I can't possibly do this alone -- 
and that means we need to have others involved. But not in an ad-hoc way.

By having a coordinator to work with me, work with the various 
committees, and work with the Board - you then have a common face who is 
generally speaking 'on-top' of what's happenning at OSGeo. It would 
allow us to actually execute in a way that saves us from spinning our 
wheels which we do a lot of at the moment.

I hope this helps to clarify my thinking.

I echo mpg's comment - one way or another I think the ability to hire an 
ED will be instrumental for us to achieving success for OSGeo. The 
sooner we are in a position to do this - the better.

Dave








Jo Walsh wrote:
> dear Dave, mpg, all,
> On Tue, Jul 18, 2006 at 09:58:46AM -0400, Dave McIlhagga wrote:
>> I think there are a lot of organizations out there who are very good 
>> prospects for supporting the Foundation, but it will be unlikely to come 
>> our way until we have a solid, professional image to present and 
>> evidence that we have our act together on the website and in our 
>> direction as an organization.
>>
>> Something we're collectively discovering is how difficult it can be to 
>> achieve all of this without a coordinating person dedicated to the effort.
> 
> Oh; the interconnectedness of all things! So when you go to a
> potential sponsoring organisation; of course the first thing they do
> is go look at http://www.osgeo.org/ , and the first impression they
> get from there, influences the response completely. There's all this
> great material building up in the VisCom library; momentum on
> incubation, and good public governance and maintenance, within OSGeo
> projects is really building; I like to think that the wider community is
> talking a lot more because of OSGeo; but this isn't coming up to the surface.
> 
> Here are my hippie sentiments; before OSGeo-we can be right with the world, 
> we have to be right with ourselves. If "we have our act together" for
> each other, that will be evidence to the outside world that OSGeo is
> generally a good thing, worth supporting the bootstrap efforts of.
> 
> 23:08 < spatialguru> maybe we are collaborative community 2.0 ;)
> 23:08 < spatialguru> and need new tools, or tools at least implemented
> in a different way.
> 23:08 < hobu> I think that the tools a community uses to do its
> business are part of the DNA of the project and shape how it develops
>  
> What I would quite like to try out is this: 
> 
> Start a community.osgeo.org site, at telascience, based on an installation 
> of http://www.civicspacelabs.com/ , a drupal distribution specialised for 
> information-sharing within non-profit communities. I'm no drupalguru,
> but I've found it really easy to get fairly sophisticated sites off
> the ground with very quickly in the past (like 2 days...).
> Pile it up with the good content from the www.osgeo site as it stands
> now; ask SAC to figure out if it'll work with LDAP; and try it out on
> the membership. I wouldn't see this as a be-all end-all solution to
> our content management / public face issues, but as a quick-fix that
> WebCom-we can put positive energy into.
> 
> If it works out, it could be a replacement for the front-end of
> www.osgeo - it can link through to the mailing list archives at CN -
> and we can encourage people to use the plain-mail EZMLM interface to
> list subscription. If it doesn't work out, then we'll have learned
> something. :) I have a good amount of free time at the moment, and i
> can't think of a better way to use it for OSGeo - especially if
> getting this sorted out *is* the key to reassuring the existing
> membership, reaching out to new or vacillating people, and producing
> something that we could be - if not proud, at least not slightly
> ashamed ;) - to present to potential sponsors.
> 
> Is this making sense?   
> 
> 
> jo
>