[Debconf-team] sponsorship levels
Hi,
I honestly think it's a big mistake not to go with sponsorship levels, as was
"decided" (*) in the sponsorship team meeting:
1. I believe, that we get more money from sponsors, if they have an incentive
to spend more money to reach higher levels. Currently it doesnt really matter
how much money they give. Organizers of other free-software conferences
supported me in this view.
2. We need to rate non-money sponsors (bandwidth, hardware, etc) anyway, to
sort the sponsors by donation on the webpage. Which we already do.
3. If we have "upper-class" (the 5-7 big ones) sponsors , those are likely to
be mentioned in press articles. (We can better influence, that our top
sponsors are mentioned, because thats those from the two highest levels of
sponsorship.) If we dont have "upper-class" sponsors, the press might choose
some, which is not really fair to the sponsors who give much money. And as we
will have >20 sponsors, no article will mention them all.
4. If we dont have sponsor classes, my (poorly doing) freelancing business is
thinking of sponsoring debconf too, to get on the t-shirt. I think it's
riduculous to get on the t-shirt for any sum.
5. So we have (or need) levels already, but we dont have clear
boundaries/rules. baaad. Clear rules are much better.
6. I completly fail to see what not using levels achieves for us and our
sponsors. OTOH, I can see that also sponsors are happy if they see their
contribution visible according to their level of contribution.
Suggested levels:
label-scheme1 label-scheme2 amount
critical gold-sponsor >50000 euro
serious silver-sponsor >25000 euro
important bronce-sponsor >10000 euro
normal sponsor > 2000 euro
minor supporter < 2000 euro
I wouldn't put sponsors below 750 euro on the t-shirt.
(And maybe >30000 _GBP_, >15000GBP, >7500GBP, >2500GBP, >1000GBP are better
boundaries (for dc7). And 500 GBP minimum to get on the t-shirt.)
And I don't think it's too late to come up with levels now. IMHO we can do
this til the end of february without looking silly, maybe even later.
I intentionally posted this to -team and not to -sponsors, to make more people
aware, that we really need more income. Wanna help (contacting more sponsors)?
As we have very little sponsorship money at the moment, I'm also thinking of
not sponsoring any europeans travelcosts. (And for next year, we should have
more categories, not only "I need travel or food+accom sponsorship" but
also "I _want_...")
regards,
Holger
P.S.: Examples of free Software Events which use sponsorship levels:
- FOSDEM: http://www.fosdem.org/2007/
- Guadec: http://guadec.org/GUADEC2006/sponsors
- Akademy: http://akademy.kde.org/sponsors/
- LCA: http://lca2007.linux.org.au/Sponsors
- freesoftwareworldconference:
http://www.freesoftwareworldconference.com/en/?q=node/21 has them
- FISL: http://fisl.softwarelivre.org/8.0/www/
I'm too lazy to dig up more atm, but there are plenty. It's harder to find
events with sponsorships without level. I'm pretty sure this is no
coincidence.
(*) Ganneff was and is against it, so the decission was held off for debconf8.
Great. Ganneff is not even part of the sponsorsteam.
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