Thread: Where to put the new donations page?

Folks,

Real Soon Now we're going to want to put up an new donations page which
funnels funds to the various PostgreSQL non-profits (SPI, SPI-Europe,
PostgreSQL.fr, JPUG).  Obviously, it would be better to make this part of the
home page ... www.postgresql.org/Donations or suchlike.

Questions:
    1) Where do we put information about the Fundraising Committee?  This ought
to be public, but it would extend the Donations page into multiple pages.  Is
that OK?
    2) Do major (> $1000) financial sponsors get to be Sponsors at
www.postgresql.org/about/Sponsors, or do we put them somewhere else?  (we'll
probably need to have this argument on Advocacy as well).

I also need to find out whether we might have to put the PostgreSQL fund stuff
on a separate web page; there are some legal restrictions on what a 501(c)3
can share a web page with.

--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

> Folks,
>
> Real Soon Now we're going to want to put up an new donations
> page which funnels funds to the various PostgreSQL
> non-profits (SPI, SPI-Europe, PostgreSQL.fr, JPUG).
> Obviously, it would be better to make this part of the home
> page ... www.postgresql.org/Donations or suchlike.

I'd suggest just updating the current one which lives at
www.postgresql.org/about/donate. No need to invent a new url ;-) Once
there is more info, we might want to make sure it shows up in the
section menu as well, and not just on the frontpage as it is now.


> Questions:
>     1) Where do we put information about the Fundraising
> Committee?  This ought to be public, but it would extend the
> Donations page into multiple pages.  Is that OK?

What *is* the fundraising comitte? ;-)

But sure, I certainly see no problem extending the donation page to
multiple pages if there is too much info on it.


>     2) Do major (> $1000) financial sponsors get to be
> Sponsors at www.postgresql.org/about/Sponsors, or do we put
> them somewhere else?  (we'll probably need to have this
> argument on Advocacy as well).

I think that's more of an -advocacy question, really. If we're going to
put them somewhere else, we need to figure out what that's supposed to
be called...


> I also need to find out whether we might have to put the
> PostgreSQL fund stuff on a separate web page; there are some
> legal restrictions on what a 501(c)3 can share a web page with.

Bleh for new sites, but you knew that :-)

But since I don't know what the fund thingie is, and even less about US
legal restrictions, I can't comment on that.

//Magnus

On Saturday 11 March 2006 14:02, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> > I also need to find out whether we might have to put the
> > PostgreSQL fund stuff on a separate web page; there are some
> > legal restrictions on what a 501(c)3 can share a web page with.
>

This seems to be a central issue in the whole thing...  Are we deprecating the
foundation website? If not we could just point to that?  Will SPI adding any
postgres bits on thier site?  If we don't need a sperate site, but we have
multiple pages of content, I could see adding a new top nav bit and
subsequent section pages to cover everything.

> Bleh for new sites, but you knew that :-)
>
> But since I don't know what the fund thingie is, and even less about US
> legal restrictions, I can't comment on that.
>

lol

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

Robert,

> This seems to be a central issue in the whole thing...  Are we deprecating
> the foundation website? If not we could just point to that?

I think so, yes, unless we trip those mentioned legal issues.   For one thing,
I want a single page that points to *all* of the accredited PostgreSQL
non-profits: SPI, FFIV, JPUG, PostgreSQLFr.org, and more in the future.

> Will SPI
> adding any postgres bits on thier site?

Yes.  I just made them an offer to re-host their site.  Clearly they need a
CMS or something a bit easier to maintain.

> If we don't need a sperate site,
> but we have multiple pages of content, I could see adding a new top nav bit
> and subsequent section pages to cover everything.

Me too.

--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

On Sat, Mar 11, 2006 at 10:54:52AM -0800, Josh Berkus wrote:
>     2) Do major (> $1000) financial sponsors get to be Sponsors at
> www.postgresql.org/about/Sponsors, or do we put them somewhere else?  (we'll
> probably need to have this argument on Advocacy as well).

Since I haven't seen this on -advocacy yet...

The only argument I can think of for seperating large donors from
corporate sponsors is that some folks might have rather different levels
of interest about each one. Having a number of corporations officially
sponsoring the project arguably carries more weight than the same number
of individual believers, even if they do have deep pockets.

It also might not make sense from a financial perspective. $1k is quite
a lot for most individuals, but it's a tiny sum for all but the smallest
companies.

But of course, my opinions might be a bit biased here... :)
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant      jnasby@pervasive.com
Pervasive Software      http://pervasive.com    work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf       cell: 512-569-9461

On Wed, Mar 22, 2006 at 11:20:20AM -0800, Darcy Buskermolen wrote:
> On Wednesday 22 March 2006 07:45, Jim C. Nasby wrote:
> > On Sat, Mar 11, 2006 at 10:54:52AM -0800, Josh Berkus wrote:
> > >     2) Do major (> $1000) financial sponsors get to be Sponsors at
> > > www.postgresql.org/about/Sponsors, or do we put them somewhere else?
> > > (we'll probably need to have this argument on Advocacy as well).
> >
> > Since I haven't seen this on -advocacy yet...
> >
> > The only argument I can think of for seperating large donors from
> > corporate sponsors is that some folks might have rather different levels
> > of interest about each one. Having a number of corporations officially
> > sponsoring the project arguably carries more weight than the same number
> > of individual believers, even if they do have deep pockets.
> >
> > It also might not make sense from a financial perspective. $1k is quite
> > a lot for most individuals, but it's a tiny sum for all but the smallest
> > companies.
> >
> > But of course, my opinions might be a bit biased here... :)
>
> Perhaps a link on the sponsors page that is "individual sponsors" and list
> those people that sponsor a significant amount.  Though saying that I'm not
> sure what qualifies as a significant amount, perhaps as low as 100.00.  And
> when i say Individual sponsosr I'm thinking small companies as well, Because
> as you say large sums are easy for large companies, but not so easy for small
> companies who are using PG as a core part of thier business.  Perhaps
> something simular to the way that PHK listed all those people that sponsored
> him to do fbsd development.
>
> http://people.freebsd.org/~phk/donations.html
> http://people.freebsd.org/~phk/funding.html

As one of the small businesses that has contributed and plans to contribute
more (the postgres pin business :)  I would appreciate my small contribution
recognized.  It is actually a fair amount of work and in very small businesses
like mine both money and bandwidth is at a premium.

I don't like the separation of big'uns and little'uns.  We all do what we
can.

--elein

--------------------------------------------------------------
elein@varlena.com        Varlena, LLC        www.varlena.com
(510)655-2584(o)                             (510)543-6079(c)

          PostgreSQL Consulting, Support & Training

PostgreSQL General Bits   http://www.varlena.com/GeneralBits/
--------------------------------------------------------------
I have always depended on the [QA] of strangers.


>
> --
> Darcy Buskermolen
> Wavefire Technologies Corp.
>
> http://www.wavefire.com
> ph: 250.717.0200
> fx: 250.763.1759
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
>

Jim,

Well, this is my general idea.  We'd divide the sponsors page into:

Code Contributors
    current developer sponsors here

Hosting Sponsors
    hub, ehpg, cmd, etc.

Financial Sponsors
    Major Sponsors
        $10,000+ annual corporate gifts
    Sponsors
        other corporate gifts, $1000-$10,000
        plus in-kind support
    Individuals (link to page)

However, the "ad-hoc fundraising group" has yet to discuss actual donor
levels.  Plus, "Financial Sponsors" *must* include donors to JPUG,
PostgresqlFR and FFIV Germany as well as PostgreSQL at SPI.

I've thought about some relativist approaches but they don't really seem
appropriate for a donor credits page -- all they would do is result in the
big companies giving less, which is not what we want.

Oh, one more note:  I'd like to phase out the banner ads by using sponsor
listings instead.  No other major OSS project I know of uses banners ads
on their site; it's time to shut them down.

--
--Josh

Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

On Wednesday 22 March 2006 07:45, Jim C. Nasby wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 11, 2006 at 10:54:52AM -0800, Josh Berkus wrote:
> >     2) Do major (> $1000) financial sponsors get to be Sponsors at
> > www.postgresql.org/about/Sponsors, or do we put them somewhere else?
> > (we'll probably need to have this argument on Advocacy as well).
>
> Since I haven't seen this on -advocacy yet...
>
> The only argument I can think of for seperating large donors from
> corporate sponsors is that some folks might have rather different levels
> of interest about each one. Having a number of corporations officially
> sponsoring the project arguably carries more weight than the same number
> of individual believers, even if they do have deep pockets.
>
> It also might not make sense from a financial perspective. $1k is quite
> a lot for most individuals, but it's a tiny sum for all but the smallest
> companies.
>
> But of course, my opinions might be a bit biased here... :)

Perhaps a link on the sponsors page that is "individual sponsors" and list
those people that sponsor a significant amount.  Though saying that I'm not
sure what qualifies as a significant amount, perhaps as low as 100.00.  And
when i say Individual sponsosr I'm thinking small companies as well, Because
as you say large sums are easy for large companies, but not so easy for small
companies who are using PG as a core part of thier business.  Perhaps
something simular to the way that PHK listed all those people that sponsored
him to do fbsd development.

http://people.freebsd.org/~phk/donations.html
http://people.freebsd.org/~phk/funding.html

--
Darcy Buskermolen
Wavefire Technologies Corp.

http://www.wavefire.com
ph: 250.717.0200
fx: 250.763.1759