First Meeting - May 9th

[Frank Warmerdam]

Folks,

I had sort of intended to have a launch meeting for the Fundraising
committee today, but I see I botched the date in the wiki and I didn't
send out any sort of reminder.  So I would like to suggest we have a
formational meeting on May 9th, at 1600UTC (12:00noon EST) in IRC.  Does
that sound ok?

The agenda is at:

   http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/FunComMeeting1

Please feel free to add agenda items.

I am presuming our main focus will be ironing out a sponsorship program.  My
initial proposal is at:
   http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Sponsorship

But there is lots of room for changes, and improvements.  Areas in which
I can see we need to work are:

  o Have we picked appropriate price points?  Are discrete sponsorship levels
    the way to go?

  o Are there ways we can name and position the sponsorship program to make it
    easier for friendly folks in organizations to sell it to management?
    (ie. "maintenance fees" are a well understand cost item in most orgs).

  o When we first floated the mapserver foundation idea Ed stressed the
    importance to potential sponsors to get in on the first big press
    deluge to get the most value out of a sponsorship.  Obviously we are
    to late for that for OSGeo, but should we be making sure that anyone that
    wants to has a chance to get into the first big sponsorship press release?
    (ie. founding sponsors) rather than starting to get sponsorships in a
    trickle.

  o Much of my thinking has been around positioning sponsorship as a way
    for organizations reliant on foundation projects to providing
    sustaining financing to improve the core quality of the software with
    a hint of preferrential support access, with promotional benefit thrown
    in for good measure.  Do we really need two programs?  One aimed at
    those wanting a promotional benefit (perhaps not project specific?) and
    another that is a bit like a support/maintenance contract without much
    in the way of guaranteed service levels?

  o How do we organize our approach to organizations so as not to mess things
    up. I'm a bit nervous about a bunch of folks running around bugging
    companies without a unified sales job, possibly giving a negative
    impression of the foundation.  How do we avoid that?

  o How soon do we want a sponsorship program up and running?  I must admit to
    be eager, though you might not be able to tell that from my level of
    activity in leading this committee!  In particular, I'm eager to start
    approaching my clients for OSGeo sponsorships (oriented to supporting GDAL)
    so I can turn some of that money around into a maintainence contract for
    GDAL over the summer.  I have someone in mind that I'm paying out of my
    own pocket through May.

  o What other fundraising angles should we be pursuing?

  o What level of income are we targetting? I've put up the number $200000US
    per year in non-project specific funding as an objective.  To me that
    seems somewhat ambitious but perhaps some ambition is called for.

  o I would like us to have a more concrete story for sponsors on what we
    intend to spend the money on.  Currently we are rather vague on this point.
    Perhaps we should even look at mocking up a budget with the support of the
    board that we would use at a couple income levels (say at $100K and $200K).

  o Assuming we allow project directed sponsorship, what sorts of controls
    should we be putting into place on PSC's spending their dedicated funds
    to ensure the use is responsible?  I think sponsors will expect the
    foundation to ensure orderly and responsible use of the money.

Hmm, well that seems like lots to address!

I would like to encourage lots of discussion on the list in advance of our
first meeting.

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    | President OSGF, http://osgeo.org