[Debconf-team] some words about fundraising (more numbers to come tomorrow)
Hi,
Before going down to business, a personal message from moi: in the
last week there has been a number of IRC discussions about our current
fundraising situation. Every now and again somebody will refer to
myself as a "pessimist". I would like to ask for people to think twice
before doing so. First, because it makes me *furious*. FURIOUS. I am
by no means a pessimist, I have been working on this for months and,
in the face of overwhelming odds I keep trying. That, my friends,
speaks of being truly an optimistic. But the part that makes me want
to punch anybody calling me a pessimist (yes, it is that bad) is that
you're recurring to name-calling instead of bringing anything of
substance to our budget debate. I am a scientist by training, you
can't discount my extrapolations just by trying to bring out any flaws
you perceive on my personality. I work towards a DebConf of financial
largess and unconstrained productivity. I just don't see that
happening at this point. People from past years are not putting
forward *numbers* to back up their claims and I don't buy them. They
just cite anecdotal evidence without taking the time to analyze how
the figures from past years differ from this DebConf (which I have
done), the time remaining for fundraising and our available pool of
potential leads. But foremost, if you're going to call me a pessimist
again. Stop. Think. And just don't. I'd more than appreciate it.
Now that we can put all that "Pablo is a pessimist' bullshit behind
us, here is our current state of affairs at my end (I'll send exact
fundraising numbers tomorrow before the meeting):
* As of today, we have contacted 125 leads. At least 60% of which are
new potential sponsors without strong ties to the project, but we have
pursued them anyway because we have a larger team and we hope for the
best. We would of course had preferred pursuing better leads, but we
exhausted the good ones we had pretty early on the year.
* We have two new members in the fundraising team this week which have
done quite a bit of cold calling: Hector Oron and Andrew Lee. I have
been very impressed with their work, and I'm hoping it will bear fruit
soon.
* Zack has been active in fundraising for a few weeks now and he has
some of the most exciting leads we have open at the moment.
* Brian Gupta got a new bronze sponsor by looking himself at the
mirror and writing us a check. He rules :-)
* Sledge has been discussing with at least two potential leads that
seem very close to close and that might bring two new bronze sponsors,
but hopefully he can say more.
* I'm closer to close (discussing numbers and benefits) with two
potential leads (one brought by Clint) that might end up in $2,500
total. There are at least two more which might total around $5,000.
And I got some new info about the state of affairs of two past
sponsors that have been unresponsive so far, but that might change and
between the two of them we can get another $5,000. (that's all I have
hopes at my end in the next 10 days or so). So you know how much we're
exhausting all options, today I was looking at a business card I got
once from a guy I was chatting on the train two years ago. (I didn't
contacted him as his company is no more.)
* People have been very forthcoming with lists of very general leads,
I have been going through some of them and I'm hoping we can divide
them up because they are at least 100+
* I realized not everybody doing fundraising is subscribed to
debconf-sponsors-team@lists.debconf.org so I'm trying to improve that
so we can use that channel for discussions (as not everybody is on
IRC).
* The time might be good to start a separate campaign to fund our
travel sponsorships, I'll send a proposal in a separate e-mail for
discussion.
* I'll collate our current numbers before the meeting and send them by
e-mail, but I wanted to give Zack, Sledge, Hector, Clint and Andrew a
chance to share with us whether they expect their leads to bear any
fruit in the next few weeks (and how money that'll mean for DebConf).
As you guys see above, these are all wild guesses but you have been
talking to your leads so we respect your opinions very much.
Thanks and sorry for the rant at the beginning, I really needed to
take it out of my system :-S
Pablo
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