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

[Dave McIlhagga]

Hi Jo,

I share your concern about the potential catch-22. I want to do what I 
can to help the fundraising process, but I'm also aware of how much 
coordinated work has to go into this effort in order to be successful.

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.

I sometimes think of OSGeo being a bit like a company without any 
full-time staff -- something that's hard for me to imagine being able to 
operate in a truly effective manner.

In any case -- my hope is that we can find a way as a group to put 
enough collective energy towards fundraising in the next 3-6 months that 
will allow us to get past the catch-22, hire an executive director, and 
get the ball rolling downhill instead of pushing it uphill as we have to 
today.

Dave



Jo Walsh wrote:
> dear FunCom, 
> 
> I am not one of life's fundraisers, and probably shouldn't be
> darkening your doors ;) However I have a question, which materially
> only you can answer, I think.
> 
> The Board has discussed the possibility of hiring a full-time
> Executive Director for OSGeo; there is a lot of favour behind the
> idea. An ED could "pay their own way" in a pretty direct fashion, by
> taking on the role of mentor/manager of the fundraising process. 
> 
> At the http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Thirteenth_Board_Meeting#Minutes
> we set a prospective budget for this, and agreed that OSGeo would need
> to have *at least* 3 months salary guaranteed (ideally more!) before
> we could have a serious discussion about hiring anyone full-time.
> 
> I'm wondering if there's a Catch-22 situation in this. The Board can
> work on a job specification, hiring process etc for an ED; but we
> can't make any commitments without being 100% certain that the money
> will be there in a sustainable way. While FunCom is running on
> precious and short-supplied volunteer energy, its hive mind may just 
> not be able to offer this kind of certainty... 
> 
> If this comes across as hassle-mail, forgive me; I intend a light
> touch; I'd just like to be able to get a sense of what is likely to 
> happen given the constraints we have; a gut sense of when OSGeo may 
> have a solid enough foundation to support a fulltime staffer; whether
> it would realistic to plan to hire an ED in October, or in the New
> Year, or whether that's really visible to us from here at all. 
> 
> as ever your free-ranging kibitzer,
> 
> 
> jo    
>