[Debconf-team] Some thoughts on sponsorship tiers, and perhaps one improvement.

[Brian Gupta <brian.gupta@brandorr.com>]

So the quick note is that over the past three years, debconf has been
making the tiers for sponsorship progressively more costly. (In an
effort to address the historically fairly constant challenges with
fundraising.) This challenges some of our smaller sponsors in
justifying the costs to continue participating in DebConf sponsorship.

So one thing I came across and really think will could address any
perceived issues with inflation in Debconf sponsorship tiers, while
still not demotivating our larger sponsors from giving at the higher
levels, is the example of the Linux Foundation which has a different
set of criteria for smaller companies. (these are for annual
membership dues, but the idea translates to our needs with a small
amount of tweaking).

I don't know if it is too late to adjust the sponsors levels for DC13
to reflect (it probably is), but I definitely think this IS definitely
a good thing to do for future years. (Please understand that I have
the perspective both of someone on the sponsors-team and a small
company sponsor). I like and understand that the Gold and Platinum
levels for Linux foundation Membership offer no discount for smaller
organizations, as it could really rub the wrong way for larger
companies giving at the highest levels.

See http://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/bylaws and scroll to very bottom.

Linux Foundation Annual Dues:

Members	 Annual Membership Dues*
Platinum	  US$ 500,000
Gold	          US$ 100,000
Silver         US$ 20,000 (employee size greater than 5,000)
                  US$ 15,000 (employee size between 500 and 4,999)
                  US$ 10,000 (employee size between 100 and 499)
                  US$ 5,000 (employee size <100)

I do think that if we did something like this it has the potential to
actually raise revenue, by preventing us from losing potential past
sponsors, while also giving us the ability to reach out to new
sponsors that are smaller companies and startups, and say we
understand and we appreciate that it is harder for a smaller
organization to give a certain amount of money.

What do people think? (Please ignore the actual numbers in this
example, as the Linux Foundation deals in much larger dollar amounts,
and I suspect they numerically have a lot more large employee-count
sponsors.)

Thanks,
Brian

P.S. - Full disclosure, my company Brandorr Group, would be one of the
sponsoring organizations that would benefit from this proposal, but
that isn't why I am proposing it. (It's largely due to feedback we
have gotten from past sponsors and just the plain fact that as we have
raised our tiers the number of smaller companies sponsors has gotten
smaller.)