1. Fundraising
and Fund-Using
Josh Berkus
OSCON 2013

2. who is this guy?
●
3yrs San Francisco Opera
Development
●
Assistant Treasurer, Software in
the Public Interest

3. Fundraising 101

4. 3 Types of Giving
1. Individual
2. Corporate
3. Grants

5. 3 Questions

6. 1. Who are they?

7. 2. What do they want
from your organization?

8. 3. How do you
reach them?

9. Individuals

10. Who
●
people who believe in your
mission
●
often already supporters
●
also the general public
– depending on your mission

11. Who
●
Figure out who your supporters are
– where do they hang out?
– how do they communicate?
– why do they support your organization?

12. What
●
to feel good about your
organization
●
to feel good about your mission

13. what about “stuff”?
Benefits Users
Just Send
Checks

14. How
1. Passive solicitation
– cheap
– easy
– low-yield (usually)
put it on your
download page

15. How
2. Active solicitation
– paper mail campaign
– email campaign
– web campaign

17. How
3. Merchandising
– works for awareness,
not so much for money
– also issues for 501(c)3s
4. Events
– meet donors
– lose money (on individuals)

18. Corporate
Sponsorship

19. Who
●
Companies who:
– are local for you
– sell to/recruit your donors/clientele
– have an image which coincides with your
mission

20. What
Marketing
(sometimes HR)

21. How
●
Branding
– put their name on “something good”
●
Events
– companies love event sponsorships
– especially if their staff get to go

22. How
1. Get an introduction
2. Write a formal ask
– emphasize marketing value
– use numbers!
3. Follow up with publicity
4. Check that they're satisfied

23. Grants

24. Who
●
Foundations
●
Corporate Grant Departments
… who fund stuff in your
mission area

25. What
They want you to help fulfill
their mission

26. How
1. Get a grant writer (really)
2. Research what's available
3. Fill out a lot of paperwork
4. Get the grant
5. Do reports on the grant progress
6. Renew (hopefully)

27. Fund-Using

28. “So, we just raised
$100,000.
Now what?”

29. First, hire a bookkeeper
●
You need to file tax forms
– Federal - 990
– State forms
– maybe local as well
●
You need to create an annual
report

30. 2nd
: Accounts
●
You'll need a corporate checking
account
– one with good online tools
– and good distributed business policy
●
but get an investment account too

31. 3rd
: A little tracking
●
$100K is enough to steal
●
Have a separate bookkeeper and
treasurer
●
Monthly reports on income and
expenses
●
consider Ledger-CLI + Git

32. What to spend it on?

33. Infrastructure
●
servers & cloud servers
– donate to OSL?
●
test machines
●
key developer laptops
●
AWS bills

34. Services
●
Bookkeeping & CPA
●
Legal advice
●
Infrastructure support
●
Adminstrative person
●
Insurance

35. Branding & Marketing
●
Domain names
●
Trademarks
●
Logos
●
Flyers/brochures
●
Conference swag

36. Travel & Conferences
●
Subsidize your annual conference
●
Sponsor partner conferences
●
Send your people to other
conferences
●
Send your people to speak to
governments/companies/comunitie
s

37. Paying for Coding
●
How?
– contract?
– feature bounty?
– student internships?
– bug bounties?
– something else?

38. Paying for Coding
Should you?
●
The “Jealosy” problem
●
The “Who's First” problem

39. Q&A
Copyright 2013 Josh Berkus.
Licensed Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.