Re: recruiting sponsors



Hi,

Alberto Ruiz wrote:
2009/5/26 Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak <mjc avtechpulse com>:
So what about

1000$ < 10 employees
2500$ < 25 employees
5000$ < 100 employees
10000$ < 1000 employees
20000$ > 1000 employees

I just want to put this in perspective.

If you have (say) 8 employees, your annual expenditures are likely to be in the region of $800,000 to $900,000. Even if you only have one, you're probably spending around $150,000.

Put like that, $1000 is not very much money for a company (especially if they can write it off). And for companies between 50 and 100 employees (that is, with annual expenditure of at least $4,000,000, and perhaps up to $10,000,000) we will actually be reducing their advisory board fee from $10,000 to $5,000.

I'm not against a sliding fee - in fact, I was the one who introduced the $5,000 level back in 2005 - but I think we probably need to adjust the totals upwards.

+1. That would dramatically increase the odds of getting money from small
companies, speaking as a <10 company person.

+1. Totally agree. These days you see a lot of GNOME small shops, I'm
pretty sure such approach would a) reduce the pressure for the current
(small) members and 2) increase the number (or at least the chance of
increase it) of overall small companies that are part of the
foundation.

Let me ask: what are you "buying" with this fee? If we're talking about sponsorship, then these levels correspond to something, don't they? A certain presence on the site, a certain size logo? But if we're talking about advisory board seats and the associated dues, don't we run the risk that the advisory board grows uncontrollably?

There's a trade-off here:
 * We want an influential advisory board with big supporters of GNOME
 * We want more money

Currently, we have the influential advisory board, and all the members (with the possible exception of Google, SFLC) are involved in distributing or developing GNOME and the GNOME platform. We don't want to lose that, but we want to increase funds available. One possible way is to increase how much we receive for the advisory board dues from each member. Another way to raise more money is to have a corporate sponsorship program where people get a reward for giving a certain amount of money. But I think it's vital to keep the two absolutely, and completely, separate.

Cheers,
Dave.

--
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org


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