[clue-admin] RFC: Potential Sponsorship Benefits

[Jed S. Baer]

On Sun, 6 Dec 2009 16:02:59 -0700
Greg Knaddison wrote:

> Here are the ideas I can brainstorm to give value to sponsors without
> being overly annoying to members of the group.
> 
> 1. Show the sponsors on the "sponsors" page of the website and remove
> any sponsors who haven't given (money, gifts or time) in over a year
> and who are not interested in renewing.

This page hasn't been updated in quite a while. Definitely needs
attention. Not sure who has any contact info. Is Jef Barnhart (sp?) still
at Batkey-Howell? Does Doug have any list of addresses?

I can see it being relatively easy to set up a small database (not
necessarily stored in a DB engine) of sponsors, and randomly or
round-robin popping up a link on the front page with each load, in
addition to having them listed on the sponsors page. As we get more
sophisticated capabilities going, we could also have acks of specific
donations when they occur.

> 2. Include sponsors name in the footer of e-mails, or in a periodic
> (monthly? quarterly? yearly?) mail to the lists.

Mailman allows some customization of the footers in mails from the lists.
Not sure how complex we can get there, but at the least we can put in a
link to the sponsor page.

> 3. Mention the sponsors at the meetings.

This would be a good thing. We used to have a more involved meeting
introduction than we do now. I miss that.

> 4. Something else - this is where you folks suggest ideas ;)

We used to encourage people to write reviews of any freebie books
received. You can tell from our book review page that this hasn't
happened much. Not sure what it'd take to get it to happen.

At the Dec. meeting, we discussed posting meeting reports with an
attendance count, so we could point potential sponsors to what sort of
exposure they'd be getting. This depends on actually mentioning sponsors
at the meeting, of course.

> Potential ways of asking for money:
> 
> * We would do "tiers" of sponsorship where different tiers get
> different benefits.  I'm inclined not to do this because it feels
> overly complex.

Agreed, though something to keep in mind. If a sponsor were to donate
money to pay for hosting, that could be mentioned in the page footer on
the site.

> * We could ask the cash donors to sponsor the hosting by the month.
> Then we could find some way to highlight the sponsor (footer of
> e-mails and/or in a block on the sidebar of the website) during "their
> month."

Do-able, with some PHP coding.

> * We could ask for at least X amount of money ($20?) and treat all the
> sponsors the same.

Easier to do. I don't know that any of our sponsorships have been purely
monetary. For a while, TechAngle donated co-location. Hall-Kinion donated
our meeting room, and then later TechAngle did that. Now Oracle provides
meeting space, and DeVry Installfest rooms. Other than that, I think it's
been all books or other sundry items. (Mmmm, pizza)

jed
-- 
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