[OSGeo-Discuss] Working together on fundraising?

[Tyler Mitchell]

It's been an inspiring week to see others thinking about fundraising and I'd like to help encourage you to share your thoughts on the subject too.

I believe we could really benefit from a concerted group effort on this if we want to continue to extend OSGeo's reach as an organisation.  If there are a few more people interested in working together to brainstorm ideas or even pursue potential sponsors - please let me know.  

If there is interest and need, we could re-activate the the Fundraising mailing list: http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/fundraising/2007-October/000218.html 
and we could also start to update this page with our ideas: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Fundraising
For now I'm happy to have discussions on this list, so no one feels left out, but we could pick up where the last committee left off.

Here are the four "traditional" opportunities where fundraising focus takes place - but I'm sure you can think of more creative ones too!
* Foundation Sponsorship
* Project sponsorship
* FOSS4G conference sponsorship
* General donations

Other ideas out there:
* Set up a certification or training program
* Add a paid membership level
* Run more events through OSGeo
* Sell more merchandise
*... what are your thoughts?

See attached graph of survey results showing the top 6 selections the 160+ respondents provided.

Interested in any of these?  Have more ideas of your own?  Let's start an informal group to work on the ideas.  Even if you only have the occasional idea or tip, please don't hesitate.  The previous committee helped assemble the basic Foundation and Project sponsorship ideas that we've had for the past 4 years, we can build on this and put some new strategic direction in place if there is interest.

It's hard for anyone to consider fundraising on their own without support behind them for the initiative, so if you need to talk privately or have ideas you would like to discuss off-list, just let me know and I'll be glad to work with you on it.   If there are a couple more people interested, then I could set up a skype voice meeting to kick around some more ideas - I just need to know who's interested.  It certainly can be a lot of fun too - especially the brainstorming side, so don't let the financial aspect scare you off ;-)

Tyler

Phone: +1-250-303-1831 (Pacific timezone)
Skype: spatialguru