[Board] In-kind sponsorships

[Howard Butler]

IMO, it would be foolish to go down this very slippery slope.  Members  
who are active in committees and organization generate their own  
visibility, and if it is seen that a business is committing a lot of  
resources to allow someone to do stuff, that effort will be implicitly  
recognized.

Recognizing in-kind effort presents a number of problems:

- Impossible to quantify
- We need money, do we not?
- Pretty much the entire OSGeo enterprise has been an in-kind endeavor  
(except for the ED).  Do we recognize the past effort too?

If you want to be recognized as a sponsor, pony up.  If you want to  
support OSGeo by providing some time, you can easily generate your own  
recognition by being active and visible.


On Oct 22, 2008, at 1:01 PM, Ari Jolma wrote:

> IMO it would be foolish to turn down their offer only because "our  
> system does not understand you" (very softwareish, though).  
> Sponsoring is not just giving money. We just need an appropriate  
> category for sponsors of this kind.
>
> Meanwhile, my sponsor-seeking efforts have not yet produced  
> anything. My Nokia contact, however, forwarded the mail to somebody  
> else, but commented that perhaps all Nokia's geospatial money went  
> into buying Navteq.
>
> Regards,
>
> Ari
>
> Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) kirjoitti:
>> I was asked by a potential sponsor if we would be able to designate  
>> them as a sponsor without paying for a sponsorship position.   
>> Instead, they were hoping to spend significant staff time working  
>> with OSGeo committees or helping organise some local events - and  
>> were hoping for recognition of their efforts.
>>
>> I explained that there is no current way to handle these kinds of  
>> "in-kind" contributions and that many other people and companies  
>> would also fall under this category.  If we went this route we  
>> could potentially stand to lose a lot of the funding we need to  
>> cover our real costs.  I promised to discuss it further with the  
>> board, so here I am...
>>
>> Tyler
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>
>
> -- 
> Prof. Ari Jolma
> Environmental Management Information Technology
> Teknillinen Korkeakoulu / Helsinki University of Technology
> tel: +358 9 4511 address: POBox 5300, 02015 TKK, Finland
> Email: ari.jolma at tkk.fi URL: http://geoinformatics.tkk.fi
>
>
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