[clue-admin] RFC: Potential Sponsorship Benefits

[Dennis J Perkins]

I would remove Jef Barnhart.  He isn't at Batky-Howell anymore and 
doesn't come to meetings either.  He comes to our study group 
occasionally if he has time.

Prosoft donates coupons if I stop and ask for one.  Otherwise we only 
have Oracle and DeVry as sponsors.


Jed S. Baer wrote:
> 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
>