[Marketing] random catchup on sponsorship

[Eli Adam]

Hi Jody and all,

On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 11:39 AM, Jody Garnett <jody.garnett at gmail.com> wrote:
> Question for the marketing committee, since it is a bit about the messaging
> on our website.
>
> With a revised sponsorship approach we are collecting more sponsors (yay!)

Great, good work.  If we have stable revenue from something other than
FOSS4G, that makes it easier to take different approaches with the
conference.  And additional diversified foundation revenue is always
good.

>
> http://www.osgeo.org/content/sponsorship/sponsors.html
>
> One surprise this year is collecting bronze sponsors (this was at the $500
> USD level) that are not directly from our industry. Is this something we
> should care about from a marketing/branding perspective?

Yes, we should care.  Our focus is open source geospatial software;
we're not an advertising platform.  The reason that we are getting
unrelated sponsors is that we are selling a really good page rank at a
very low price.  I think that other OSGeo project have had to decline
sponsorships from adult or other non-related websites.

>
> Background: The original intension here was to have a way for small business
> to be represented in our organization by offering a lower price point. The
> cumulative sponsorship (combining support of OSGeo events, projects,
> initiatives) also meets this need.

If we raised our prices so that bronze sponsorship was no longer an
incredibly good deal for the page rank, then this would end.  (i.e. We
won't ever have an over abundance of unrelated platinum sponsors.)
However, the goal is to raise sponsorship and a reasonable entry point
for small businesses which often make substantial contributions to
OSGeo projects.

>
> One idea (for next year) is to ask sponsors for a link to their open source
> landing page (example, example, example, example).

I think that we should have a requirement that sponsors be at least
related to the geospatial industry.  This requirement can easily be
applied with just a bit of thought.  If denied sponsors don't like
their denial, they can appeal to the Board and make their case that
they are geospatially related.  I would be in favor of returning those
unrelated sponsors' money and removing them.  At least no more
unrelated sponsors and no option for renewal for the existing
unrelated sponsors if we don't refund and remove.

My thoughts, Eli

> --
> Jody Garnett
>
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