Ana Guerrero Lopez dijo [Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 10:21:20AM +0100]: > * Fundraising > > DebConf is one of the biggest expenses of Debian, every year we look > for sponsorship and we had (and have) sponsors who were sponsoring > DebConf as a way of giving their "annual donation" to Debian and > not necessarily funding DebConf itself. > (Do you agree with this part, BTW?) > In recent years, we have started to invest more Debian money in stuaff > such like sprints and minidebconfs¹ that sometimes look for external > founding. This has lead to some cases where sponsors have been > contacted for separate teams in Debian which can be confusing. > If you think this is a problem. How do you think we can improve this? > > ¹ Both investments are a great idea BTW
Hi Ana, and thanks for bringing this up. I want to add a point to your question by moving a request/discussion I should be commenting on in the DebConf world, but is completely relevant to what you say. So, DPL candidates, please also comment on this! A fundamental part of DebConf organization (and a part I'm basically unfamiliar with, as I've always shied away from those aspects) is sponsor acquisition. And, of course, DebConf cannot (and is not expected) to reach a perfect balance — some years we end up with a surplus, and sometimes we have to ask Debian for money. Fortunately (and thanks to the great, hard work of the people doing sponsor scouting), the overall balance is quite equilibrated. As you can see on the DebConf13 final report¹, last year was a great success in this regard: Not only we stayed quite under the estimated budget, but we raised one of the largest sponsorship amounts in our history. But, as Ana says in this mail, many sponsors view this money they are giving as their "annual donation" to Debian. Not all of Debian's expenses are as publicized as DebConf is, and it might be hard to get the money just for our regular running costs and upgrade plans, or for smaller conferences/sprints, or whatever. Now, DebConf has followed the policy of not counting of a given year's surplus as income for our next edition. All of the surplus of DebConf13 becomes, just as DC13 is finalized, regular Debian money. Now... Being five months before DC14, we still have a long time to get more sponsors. But we are also at the point in time that most likely seems dismal. We are in no way at a "failure" point, but the DC14 team asked Lucas (and us chairs) for Debian to make a funding commitment of up to the DC13 surplus. So... I want to make this specific case more into the generic case, not specifically discussing DC14. I know (from historical trends) that we are at a point where tension is building, and close to DebConf things will automagically start working. I don't know how, but it tends to work that way ;-) So, back to the case: What's your take on this issue? How much can one part of the Debian universe of subprojects expect the money it generated be available for its future? Should we set a clear number? [ Full disclosure: I'm pushing this subject here with authorization from Steve Langasek, who brought up the topic in a private DPL-Auditors-Chairs mail. Lucas answered right away; we the Chairs have not yet answered a peep on the topic, but making the issue (without some details as specific money or specific questions) more visible might be a good idea. Besides, I feel this to be on-topic for the discussion at hand. ] ¹ http://media.debconf.org/dc13/report/DebConf13-final-report.en.pdf
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
