Fundraising

This page describes the workflow of the fundraising team.

General resources

• IRC: #debconf-sponsors@oftc
• mailing list:debconf-sponsors-team@lists.debian.org
  • https://lists.debian.org/debconf-sponsors-team/
• debian-sponsors Git repository (Please send email to sponsors@debconf.org, with your Alioth info, and request to join the project in Alioth)
  • Git URL: git+ssh://git.debian.org/git/debian-sponsors/debian-sponsors.git
• Request Tracker (RT) at rt.debconf.org. Mails to sponsors@debconf.org go there and from there to the mailing list. For anything else the use of RT is optional. If you like it, use it. If you don't, you don't have to.
  • To get RT access, contact sponsors@debconf.org with a request.
• How to do the sponsor file: https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Sponsors-list-format-2.0

You should avoid saying sponsors' names publically until they have committed. This includes not including names in the svn or git commit logs.

Initial contact

• check the sponsors-table file in order to see the status of the potential sponsor and adresses
• send an email with a cover letter and the brochure (cover letter is optional as long as you include it in the body of your email).

 * the cover letter is available as TeX sources or email in the SVN repository
 * the brochure is available as TeX sources in the SVN repository or as PDF on media.debconf.org

• update the sponsors-table

Follow-up

• check the sponsors-table file in order to see the status.
• update the sponsors-table

Finalizing the deal

• Ask for a physical mail address (invocing information), contact person, and preferably email address. Invoice media preferences (email with a pdf or post mail) Record this in git.
• Ask for a physical mail address and person (most probably our contact) to send the thank you letter and "sponsor bag" (containing a t-shirt and other items all the attendees get) after the conference
• Ask for a logo to place on our website or T-Shirt, a vectorized logo graphic with transparent background (SVG is best, pdf and eps are ok).
• place a note with the confirmed amount into the sponsors-table and move the entry to the correct section
• place the sponsors logo in the correct section on the website
• Write an invoice (work with the budget folks for this - where are we going to get money sent)
• Send it via email or post
• Confirm money is well received

At the end of the conference

Send a "sponsor bag" and "thank you" letter to every sponsor, including:

• Thank you letter
• T-shirt
• conference bag
• other items given to all attendees

This is best done during the conference and not afterwards. It's much easier to pack everything during the conference and to collect the missing contact info.

Updating the sponsor-table

ALWAYS: when you add / update a sponsor's entry, add your name and the date so that we can see at a glance where things are up to. If you're pinging a company contact without responses, still list those so that we know what's going on. We don't want to flood-ping people by accident!

See also

DebConf Fundraising by Pablo Duboue, DebConf10 fundraising team