Friends of GNOME

Friends of GNOME is a scheme that allows people to regularly donate money to the GNOME Foundation.

Goals

• Raise money for the GNOME Foundation, through regular subscriptions and one time donations.
• Increase awareness of GNOME's mission, and the role of the Foundation.
• Generate a sense of community among supporters. Increase their dedication and enthusiasm.

Scheme Administrators

• TobiasMueller - maintains infrastructure, responds to queries, keeps everything working

• RosannaYuen - sends out perks (t-shirts, stickers, mouse pads, and so on), and keeps hackers supplied with GNOME postcards

Perks for Donors

• Adopt a hacker ($10 a month)
  • Post card
  • LWN subscription
  • T-shirt
• Associate ($25-500)
  • Mouse pad
  • Stickers
• Sponsor ($500-1200)
  • Coffee mug
  • T-shirt
• Philanthropist ($1200+)
  • Signed poster from the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors

All of these items are paid for by the GNOME Foundation. The Foundation has a deal in place to get LWN subscriptions at a reduced cost (there's an annual subscription fee for each donor who uses their LWN subscription).

Scheme Details and Organization

• Regular payments are only accepted via Paypal. These are sent to the GNOME Foundation.
• Single one time donations are also accepted, through cheque, wire transfer, Flattr and Bitcoin.
  • Donors receive an automatically generated thank you email.
  • These donations are framed under the umbrella of Friends of GNOME, but we don't offer perks like for regular donations.

• friends@gnome.org email alias:

  • Receives automated emails about donations from Paypal (this also seems to receive other email from Paypal, not necessarily related to Friends of GNOME).
  • Emails sent directly to the email address (sometimes from donors).

  • Currently signed up to the alias: TobiasMueller, RosannaYuen, AllanDay

• The automated infrastructure is made up of scripts that are maintained by TobiasMuller.

• Email templates:

  • Welcome for new donors

  • Cancelled donation

  • Offer LWN subscription (this is sent after the donor has been paying for one month or at least 25 USD)

  • Provide LWN access code

• After adopt a hacker donors have paid a certain amount, they are sent an email asking if they want to take up their free LWN subscription. If they say yes (in a reply), TobiasMueller sends them an email with a token that they can use to claim.

  • Each token works for a year. It must be renewed (FIXME: do donors get an email to tell them how to do this? Do they get notified when the token has lapsed?) by the donor.
• We have team of people who send out post cards to donors.

  • Post card senders are automatically sent an email with instructions of who to send a post card to.

Friends of GNOME Campaigns

The Engagement Team has run a number of Friends of GNOME fundraising campaigns in the past:

• Sysadmin (started March 2010) - see Stormy's blog post

• Accessibility (December 2011 - June 2012)

• Privacy (December 2012 - July 2013)

Planning and Strategy

• /RefreshInitiative - coordination page for refreshing Friends of GNOME

• /HowWeCanImprove - ideas and research

• /Future Campaigns - ideas for future fundraising campaigns

Resources

• Frequently asked questions - for answering Friends of GNOME queries

See Also