[openbeos] Re: "One Hour for Haiku" - Coordinating Voluntary Cash Donors

Hi Czeslaw,

Czeslaw Czapla wrote:
But it would be a mistake to pose these various elaborations as *prerequisites* to implementation of a simple membership donation program like One Hour for Haiku. I must argue that it would be more useful to think -- contrariwise -- of the membership donation program as part of a *foundation* that could ultimately permit greater organizational capabilities and maturity through improved financial wherewithal.
There is already have a *foundation* and it's called Haiku Inc. I am just pointing out that this is the one entity that should have been driving this kind of effort.
Keeping it simple, what I am proposing is really just an addition to the Haiku website.
You can surely keep it simple as you propose. However, if you want to make a *meaningful* difference in terms of funding (and then more), then you need to do something more involved.
People are willing to donate, but they do want see their contributions translate into tangible results (or at least results that they can relate to). You should start with having some sort of yearly *operational budget* (so to call it), with a breakdown of the different areas that require funding (admin, legal, advocacy, development, etc.), specific goals for the year (ie., move website/Trac to dedicated server, trademark Haiku logo(s), hold WC07 in Europe, exhibit at XXX Expo and YYY Conference, sponsor development workshop, hire X number of for X months, etc. etc.), and target numbers for each area that people can donate against. A donation drive can be announced, and scale showing how much has been raised so far against the total target could be shown in the website front page. Finally, for transparency purposes, you need some sort of periodic financial reporting showing where the money has actually been spent.
As a desirable side effect, the above exercise would also help project some sort of direction of where Haiku is headed as a project (not the OS), making it more compelling by inspiring the sort of confidence that makes people more comfortable with entertaining the idea of making a monetary donation that they consider worthy.
All of the above can only be done with the *proactive* involvement of Haiku Inc. and the endorsement of the core devs (admins). I realize this is quite involved, but then, so is the work of the many contributors to Haiku, and you don't see developers/etc. complaining because they spend their time on Haiku. I am not a dev and I certainly don't speak for them. But when I contribute to the project, I know that I would expect this sort of reciprocity from the entity that I am giving the copyright of my work to. 

Cheers,

Koki

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