On 30/04/17 14:18, Sebastiaan Couwenberg wrote: > On 04/30/2017 01:53 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote: >> - how do people view the distribution of merchandise, is the primary >> goal fundraising or is it about brand exposure? > > There are more reasons than these two. > > For the t-shirts that I had made and sold at the T-DOSE & FOSDEM > conferences the primary motivation was user demand. Especially at T-DOSE > I got several questions if we had T-shirts and had to tell them no, this > resulted in having shirts made the next year. > > There is also a lot of demand for laptop stickers, which I haven't had > made yet, but am considering. >
Let me put it another way: when you are trying to meet that demand from people, do you make that effort because you want to raise money or because of brand, community, etc? >> - would it be reasonable for 1% - 2% of Debian's reserves to be tied up >> in slow moving inventory items like t-shirts that take up to a year to >> fully turnover? As the reserves are mostly kept in cash Debian probably >> loses at least that much to inflation each year anyway. > > This is tricky, since Debian is non-profit and selling merch can be > considered a for-profit activity. "Non-profit" means that Debian does not distribute surplus profits back to people such as shareholders. It does not mean that Debian can not make a profit on the sale of a t-shirt, as long as that profit is re-invested in the organization. > Having Debian funds available for merchandise will lower the barrier for > Debian people to to have it made since they don't have to invest their > own money. > > Kind Regards, > > Bas >
