On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 4:18 PM, Brian Gupta
<brian.gupta@brandorr.com> wrote:
So, this issue came up where we were going to give the same $500 as we have in the past, and it seems for DC12 there is no steel level, and $500 is well below the new minimum donation level of $2000.
Just to be clear, there's no "minimum donation level", there's simply a minimum amount before a sponsor gets its logo on the website or other benefits.
Here is the question. Does DebConf want to find a way to accomodate and recognize smaller contributions, particular if they are recurring? Holger seems to feel yes. (As do I, but I am biased.)
Yes in principle. This could be done, for example, by maintaining a full list of donators (including individuals who want to be named) on a special page of the website.
Using myself as an example, assuming we are looking to get recognized at the minimum sponsorship level of Bronze, we would need to make a commitment to donate 2 x the bronze level. ($2k x 2 = $4k) over a multiyear time period. In our case we would commit $4000 over an 8 year period, to get recognized as a bronze level sponsor for the eight year period. (Or something like that).
For this to work, the levels would have to be fixed year to year. eg: Bronze needs to stay at $2k.
I don't think that is realistic -- clearly the levels should at least go up with inflation (= real terms currency devaluation), and I don't think we want to get into the business of predicting inflation levels 8 years out. (If someone from the team can do that, they should do some financial trading on our behalf and after the profits we won't need to seek sponsorship any more!)
We (Debian) would also need it to be a bit more formalized than just a sayso on IRC. (IE: A formal donation form/commitment would need to be required.)
I don't think we have the resources to pursue companies who make agreements like this but then stop paying after a few years (and I don't think that this would be good publicity for Debian). Note that quite a number of past sponsors have been bought up by other firms and stopped being sponsors.
If we need to do anything about recurring sponsors, I would suggest instead to reward sponsors who have already sponsored at a given level for a number of years. That gives the same incentive to continue every year (or lose the extra status), in a more positive way.
In addition, only current and future commitments would count here. (not past donations.) This wouldn't mix with local sponsorshp levels, which are variable, and really don't fit. I would also say that the ratio of annual commitment can't really be longer than a fixed period of time, e.g. - One can't say "I commit to $500 a year over the next 100 years to get the highest level."
I'm afraid that $4000 in total over 8 years to get the benefits of a $2k level every year, which means the benefits that would otherwise come from $16k in total, already sounds an unreasonable ratio to me.
More generally, remember that most sponsor companies that are small now would hope to grow significantly during an 8 year period. We shouldn't lock them into the donation levels that they can manage now (especially not while we're in a period which many are finding hard economically).
--
Moray