[Osmf-talk] Financing the OSMF

Oleksiy Muzalyev oleksiy.muzalyev at bluewin.ch
Mon Aug 26 14:28:38 UTC 2013


Here is a system of Donor Recognition at the OCW of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology: (
http://ocw.mit.edu/donate/individual-supporters/donor-recognition/ )

OCW Visionaries - $50,000+
OCW Benefactors - $25,000 - $49,999
OCW Ambassadors - $10,000 - $24,999
OCW Fellows - $5,000 - $9,999
OCW Patrons - $2,500 - $4,999
OCW Associates - $500 - $2,499
OCW Supporters - $0 - $499

What if to create a clearly visible link to the "Donor Recognition"
web-page under "Make a Donation" button at the www.osm.org ?

On this page there could be sections, say: "OSM Visionaries", "OSM
Benefactors", etc. with logos and link to a company's website.

If a donor is an individual and if she/he wants her/his name on this
page, then the name is published.

If a company makes such a substantial donation it should get something
in return. A logo and an incoming link to a company's website on the
"Donor Recognition" web-page a seems to be appropriate. It stays on this
web-page for good.

brgds,
Oleskiy
[ http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Alex-7 ]

On 26.08.2013 12:54, Simon Poole wrote:
> 
> [This is a topic of some personal interest to me and hasn't been
> discussed in depth nor has the discussion of this been sanctioned by the
> board]
> 
> One of the issues that I believe we need to attack is the financing of
> the OSMF. I've mentioned this before in the articles of association
> discussions. Given that we now have 2012 financials as some facts to
> check our assumptions against, I would like to see if there are some
> ideas other than my own (the topic just doesn't seem to interest very
> much) that might be interesting to pursue.
> 
> To illustrate the issues, lets look at the 2012 numbers. Leaving the
> earmarked donations for hardware and depreciation away and income and
> expense for SOTM (more on that later), we have roughly
> 
> £3'000 income from membership fees
> £3'000 of misc. income
> 
> versus
> 
> £12'000     of operational expenses (hosting etc)
> £4'000        insurance
> £2'000        bank charges and other misc expenses
> £6'500        accounting and legal
> £5'000        expenses
> £6'000        professional fees (I suspect this was one time,
> historically this item was always negligible)
> 
> of the above at least the hosting, insurance, accounting and bank
> charges are unavoidable recurring fixed costs. Comparing  our "secured"
> regular income (£'3000) with these costs (£25'000) we see an annual
> short fall of at least £22'000 (assuming that travel expenses and
> professional fees are not really necessary). Historically this hasn't
> been an issue because we have been able to rely on SOTM turning a neat
> profit, however there is no guarantee that this will continue and it is
> unfair in the sense that it adds an unspoken requirement on the SOTM
> organizers that may be very difficult to fulfil.
> 
> Further, we are not exactly splurging on our operational costs, if we
> would have to pay anything near commercial rates we would likely be at
> least 10 times higher. It seems unlikely that with growth we will be
> able to maintain the extremely low rate of £1'000 per month in any case.
> 
> I believe the issue is clear, we need a medium to long term model for
> financing the OSMF. My personal favourite solution would be to balance
> out our fixed costs with a similar amount of fixed income. Based on the,
> not unreasonable, feeling that it is relatively easy to get donations
> for hardware, asking the same to cover insurance is likely not to work.
> Assuming further that we are not going to change our business model, our
> only potential source of such fixed income are our membership fees, and
> given that we would rather lower, than increase such fees for
> individuals, that leaves fees for corporate membership as the only
> source of such income.
> 
> But, as I wrote above, maybe there are other viable scenarios and ideas.
> If you have such, please bring them to the table.
> 
> Simon
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
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