Re: recruiting sponsors

[Stormy Peters <stormy gnome org>]

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 11:59 AM, Alberto Ruiz <aruiz gnome org> wrote:
> 2009/5/26 Stormy Peters <stormy gnome org>:
>> I agree and I think there's two ways we could deal with this. I'm
>> recommending the second.
>>
>> 1) Completely divorce adboard seats from money. Make the adboard by invite
>> only. We would get/keep a lot of control but we would lose our leverage to
>> raise money through the adboard. (Also, many of our supporters in companies
>> use this as a way to convince their management that sponsoring the GNOME
>> Foundation is a good thing. It gives them a seat on the adboard which
>> enables them to work closely with the GNOME Foudnation and project.)
>
> Hi Stormy,
>
> Well, as I see it, if a company wants to be in the board, they should

I think it also looks important on websites and resumes so I don't
think the desire always correlates with adding value. Although it does
90% of the time.

> probably be in the board (meaning, if they have the will to be
> involved, they probably have some value to add). We could state that
> only foundation members can be in the adboard, and that the inclusion

I think many of our adboard members, some of whom are very good
contributors, are not foundation members. So we should think about
that ...

We could however ask that companies have people apply and explain how
they can/will contribute. I don't know how that would go over ...

Thoughts?

> in the adboard has to be negotiated with the board of directors first
> to discuss what values do they want to provide. I don't think we lose
> the leverage given such scenario, we just lose the 1-1 map between
> foundation and adboard members.

I do think that companies that really don't have a lot to add probably
just wouldn't show up so the adboard wouldn't grow unreasonably, but
there's no point in having a huge advisory board where only a small
percentage show up. It would be really hard to know how best to
structure meetings to be useful.

Stormy