[Marketing] random catchup on sponsorship

[Jeroen Ticheler]

+1 on not accepting unrelated sponsors. The current Bronze sponsors listed seem to be advertising totally different stuff. No good marketing for OSGeo. 
Cheers,
Jeroen

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> Op 23 jun. 2016 om 21:11 heeft Eli Adam <eadam at co.lincoln.or.us> het volgende geschreven:
> 
> 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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