Fundraising

This page is provisional, and the following declarations are not approved by the OSGeo board.

The foundation will require funding for infrastructure (internet servers + bandwidth), promotion, administrative and legal expenses. The foundation may hire a part-time or full-time staff member as executive director. It is also hoped that the foundation can collect and administer money to support work on foundation projects.

To collect that funding there will be a Fund Raising Committee, and a series of fund raising initiatives. It is currently expected that the majority of foundation funding will come from a sponsorship program.

Sponsorship Program
Organizational sponsorships will be offered to organizations at the following levels (per annum):
 * 1) Silver: $3000 USD
 * 2) Gold: $9000 USD
 * 3) Platinum: $27000 USD

Sponsorships entitle organizations to being listed on the OSGeo web site sponsors page (ranked by contribution amount). Sponsoring organizations are also allowed to state their sponsorship, and use the OSGeo logo on their web site and other materials in manner to be defined.

Sponsoring organizations may also state their desire to support one or more foundation projects. When this is done two thirds of the sponsorship amount will be divided up and kept by the foundation in Project Accounts for the exclusive use of the named projects. How that money is spent would be determined by the PMC for the projects with some oversight by the foundation board to ensure responsible use.

The remaining one third (or the entire sponsorship amount if no specific project support is declared) goes into the foundation's general use account to support foundation wide needs. General use funds will generally not be directed to support particular projects.

Sponsorships are intended to give two things to the sponsoring organization. First is the public relations benefit of supporting the foundation. Second is the ability to support the foundation projects on which they depend, helping to ensure they are well maintained and thrive in the future.

Sponsoring a project does not give the sponsor any priveledge to control how the money is spent by the project, or control the projects technical direction. However, it is anticipated that projects desiring to collect sponsorship funds will want to be responsive to the needs of their sponsors. It should also be noted that project sponsorship is not the only route to supporting a particular projects. Organizations can also directly fund development work (not through the foundation), or provide their own staff resources to work on the project.

Corporations in most countries can write off sponsorships as a business expense, so the charitable status of the foundation in their country should not matter.

Who Might Be a Sponsor?

 * End user organizations using the foundation packages, such as governments, NGOs and service organizations. These organizations are already saving money using free software, and have a stake in the successful future improvements to the packages and the health of the open source geospatial  ecosystem.
 * Consultants and integrators are building solutions for their clients based on foundation projects. The continued success of the packages is important to their commercial leverage.  The PR benefit of sponsorship helps raise their stature when with potential clients.  Sponsorship can also give them soft influence with projects to get bugs fixed, or features added that they need.
 * Proprietary software vendors using the libraries in their packages are good candidates.  These companies depend on the quality of the libraries as well as benefiting from the PR association of sponsorship.

Who Solicits Sponsors?
In theory anyone can approach potential sponsors. Any supporter of OSGeo is welcome to raise the possibility in conversations with possible sponsors. However, a formal approach to organizations on behalf of Open Source Geospatial Foundation should be coordinated though the Fund Raising Committee. This ensures that potential sponsors don't get bombarded with duplicate requests, and ensures that the person approaching the organization is equipted with all information about sponsorship.

For this reason, individuals are encouraged to refer sponsorship possibilities to the fund raising committee. Perhaps after a first informal feeling out. The fund raising committee may then assign a member to approach the potential sponsor, or provide additional direction to the person originating the suggestion. An existing relationship with the potential sponsor can be a big asset.

Employees are encouraged to raise the idea, and refer their employer if they seem like a good candidate. Those inside an organization can provide invaluable insight into what factors may influence an organization and who best to approach. In some cases it may not be desirable for an employee to be giving the pitch. In other cases it may be desirable.

Project developers are encouraged keep an eye out for users of their project that might be open to a sponsorship opportunity. In some cases a sponsorship pitch from a project lead may carry more weight with potential sponsors, than someone from the fund raising committee.

So, the general pattern is that everyone is encouraged to keep an eye out for potentially sponsors, and possibly feel them out on the idea informally. But then refer the candidate to the fund raising committee for a unified and professional approach, possibly through the originator.

Individual Donations
It is anticipated that the foundation will be a 501(c)3 charitable corporation in the USA. This allows US individuals to donate money to the foundation and write it off on their taxes as a charitable donation. Citizens from other countries would not get the same tax deduductability, and it is not planned that the foundation would setup similar corporations in other countries due to the legal overhead to do so.

While such individual donations are welcome, and will be put to good use. However, time and effort spent on commmittee work, development, documentation, testing, user support, and advocacy are the preferred form of contribution from individuals.

Conference
The foundation will operate an annual conference starting in 2007, following up on the FOSS4G conference. Conferences can be money making ventures, but putting on a broad and well attended conference is also seen as one of the primary goals of the foundation for it's community building, and promotional benefits. So current plans are that the foundation should aim for a roughly revenue neutral conference.

Note that the conferences have traditionally solicited conference sponsors, and are expected to continue doing so.

Other
A few other ideas that have been suggested.
 * Selling swag like tee-shirts, mugs, etc.
 * Selling CDs with pre-built software.
 * Charging membership fees.
 * Submitting grant applications to other charitable foundations or governments.
 * Providing contract development services (seen as conflicting with the charitable status of the foundation, and in direct competition with consulting organizations).

Discussion
Talk:Fundraising