Discussion - Corporate sponsorship / donations / membership levels
In the January 2024 board meeting, some time was set aside for discussions on corporate and individual sponsorship. This Loomio is to allow to discussion and focussed on corporate payments only. This is the discussion and a further voting Loomio or a vote at a board meeting will occur if we have a firm proposal. .
Potential corporate discussion points
Do funds go into consolidated revenue or into a microgrant pool / Travel Grants Program, software support or can the organisation select which area to fund?
Will our receipts be tax deductible?
What potential tiers are we looking for?
How do we traffic manage competing companies, especially where one company has been a great contributor in the past only to have a larger one "gazump" them by selecting a higher tier
Are there any negatives that you can see to this?
What level of pickup would the board expect to see to make it viable?
What will the review process be to see if this is VFM
The cost (hours/fees) of servicing this?
Will GST for Aus/Non-Aus be easy to perform?
Do we start this prior to Individual or at the same time?
Over to you...
Elisa Puccioni Thu 18 Jan 2024 3:12AM
Agree, can we park this idea for future us and maybe concentrate on the individual sponsorship first? it feel more well fitted with our current purpose (and capabilities)
John Bryant · Sun 14 Jan 2024 1:45PM
I think this is fraught.
Conference sponsorship is a clear value proposition but sponsoring an org is less so. Offering a "return on investment" has the potential to threaten our independence and alienate the community.
We risk being used to promote things we wouldn't choose to. We can reject sponsors but would need to think hard about how we do this.
We risk alienating companies and orgs that currently contribute freely. If long-time voluntary contributor company A sees company Z, who has never lifted a finger for this community, being touted as a special friend of OSGeo Oceania because they provided a payment of $5k, company A may not want to play any more.
I don't see the need at this point. I'm yet to fully comprehend OSGeo Oceania's financial position but I understand we're financially stable. We have a healthy bank balance and some of our past conferences have returned a large enough surplus to cover our operating costs. I think we should carefully consider why we need more money before we commit to hunting for corporate sponsorship. Otherwise, it could be seen as just chasing money.