Executive Committee: Fundraising

First meeting of the fundraising executive committee.

Attendees:

• Ekke Guembel
• Dominique De Cooman
• Ruth Cheesley

Notes

• Discussed the progress so far, around $40k deficit still to bring in but we are positive on the outlook.
  
  
• Discussion on the importance of planning for a future of growth and what it would look like to not be functioning on 'bare bones' basis.
• We need to determine what we prioritise going forward - funds raised should inform the spend, rather than the other way round 
• Probably funding for another person to support Ruth, plus additional funding for travel budget to enable more in person meetings where things 'get done'.
  
  
• Need to focus on how we bring in the funds that we need to address the deficit and fuel future growth.
• Ekke has a new sales person (Inga) coming in at the beginning of May - they can help with sales follow up
• Action: Ruth to work on writing up a process for them to support efforts. 
• Action: Ruth/Ekke to Coordinate a briefing/onboarding
  
  
• Are we offering a good enough perks offering for organisations who don't necessarily care about the open source project? HEM and other companies have expressed that what we offer isn't really going to lead to ROI for them, which is what they're interested in.
• Do we offer the value that we propose in the tiers? What is the ROI? Can we make this clearer?
• If we think outside of the Mautic service providers, the wider ecosystem, how much do we offer them?
• Could we look at the wider industry and approach those companies who would benefit from exposure to our audience?
• How do we promote them more effectively? Directory / featured listings etc
  
  
• Discussion that we effectively have 4 audiences who need different approaches
• Individuals
• Mautic service providers
• benefits
• moral obligation
• (in 1st contact we do not know which they will respond to, so we need to address both - and try to find out which one is relevant to them)
• Mautic users
• moral obligation
• Ecosystem
• benefits
  
  
• Renewals will be taking place from August onwards so we need to plan for that and proactively plan for an updgrade
• Could we give a discount for people who upgrade their tiers, for the first year? This works well with TYPO3 (but of course we lose 10% of the amount).
• Need to have conversations early with companies to make sure we are front-of-mind on their budget planning processes.
• Discussed when to chat with the renewing members - ideally before the renewal rather than after.
  
  
• Discussion on how we can perhaps support the fundraising project more fully
• Maybe we could look into hiring someone to review the potential leads and make calendar bookings for Ruth to follow up (Ekke's team member can help with some of this)
• Someone who could act as an assistant to deal with admin/general work
• General discussion on hourly rates and whether it's appropriate to pay less in different areas of the world or for different levels of seniority
  
  
• Conferences
• Can we organise sales meetings at/around the in person conference

Actions

• Action: Ruth to work on writing up a process for finding potential leads to work with Inga
• Action: Ruth/Ekke to Coordinate a briefing/onboarding
• Action: Ruth to review perks and determine what can be offered to companies/agencies to add value outside the community
• Action: Propose offering a 1 year discount for early upgrade of memberships
• Action: Start to plan for how we can process / automate / assign conversations about membership renewals
• Action: Consider alternative compensation policies - this would need to be presented for review to Council (and perhaps adopted as a motion in the General Assembly)