Some talking points for funding.

[Sam-Burton]

Following my recent project, I wanted to raise some money to increase opportunities within OSM. I had the thought of starting up a charity and spent a little time drafting a website. Although public donation isn’t necessarily a great source of income, I had thought that there would still be uses for the money. Possibly offering small amounts of funding to incentivise more undergraduate OSM projects at universities, which could spread the awareness and reach of the platform both directly and indirectly. I also wanted to use the charity front to pursue larger donors, trusts, celebrities and possibly business CSR departments to raise enough to make a real contribution.

Being unsure of whether to proceed, I asked Matthew Todd for his opinion on the idea and he mentioned in response that fragmenting efforts with a split front may lead to a dilution and confusion of brand image, which is a good point. He pointed out that it may be a better move to turn OSM itself into a non-profit organisation so that we can start to gather donations directly.

As such, I would like to raise the above talking points. It would be interesting to hear opinions on securing public donations, making OSM into a non-profit organisation, pursuing additional "atypical" sources of funding and maybe finding new ways to spread the reach of the project.

[holeung]

Sure! I think more PR for OSM, open science, neglected diseases, and the value of scientific research would do the world a lot of good. More $ is also good too. Like many of the other lab heads here, I spend a lot of my time fundraising.

I would love to see a celebrity spokesperson for OSM!

[MFernflower]

@holeung I'm thinking either Bill Gates or John Nobel (He played the lead doctor in a sci-fi show called Fringe) - It would be pretty cool to see a fictional doctor who dealt with fictional infectious diseases supporting efforts to deal with real ones!

But on a more serious note a donation website should be somewhat priority

[drc007]

Gates foundation already fund MMV and they are a now well established research fund for Malaria research. I suspect that if you want to get noticed it might be better to highlight open research rather than malaria.

[Sam-Burton]

Thank you for your responses, if it's generally regarded as a good idea then it's the logistics that need to be considered. The biggest thing on my mind is how would we best approach marketing, does anyone have any experience?

[holeung]

I think the first step would be assembling a team of people experienced with non-profit fundraising. I would do that by following personal and community contacts of our network. They can serve as active members or as advisors.

[mattodd]

Thanks for thoughts everyone. Sorry to miss the original post - I was a little off the grid.

Fundraising is crucial. Science is expensive. Donations can be transformative, but often they only come about at large scale because a campaign is managed and orchestrated. It takes a remarkable amount of time to manage fundraising, and track the use of those funds, and report back to givers.

This is not to say we couldn't do it, but that managing the money takes time. As an open project we would have the significant advantage that we could be really quite transparent in our finances - what the money has bought, or achieved.

I would guess (I don't know) that donated funds could be useful for specific milestones or targets. For example, if a student group needed some resources for a project. Or if we needed some funding for a particular experiment. At the other extreme, though, I can imagine major resources being mobilised if we needed key, expensive experiments to be done to help generate data for further financing.

So without wishing to specify what might be funded, it seems to me that OSM should be in a position to receive funds, to allow people to support the science directly. I've some people here at UCL who are qualified to advise on this, and I'll start that conversation. It's likely we could really use help with some of the mechanics of all this down the line, i.e. some pro bono legal.

About the "forking", however: @Sam-Burton has taken enormous initiative here, and I'm not sure of the next steps. I don't want to confuse people with too many related, branded initiatives. Is there a way, Sam, for you to operate in a way that brings funds together and which can operate alongside/with a version of OSM that is non-profit and eligible to receive donations?

(thanks for starting this thread, Sam. @drc007 I quite agree that the point here is to support open science in OSM, i.e. that is what is distinct.)

[mattodd]

Minor terminology point. I think we're right to talk about "non-profit" rather than "not-for-profit"? Someone once explained the difference to me, but the conversation happened at a brief moment when there happened to be an amazing view, and I missed it.

[cdsouthan]

As usual, its good to get on the grapevines to sound out the options, even off the record, while chinking the wine glass in various contexts. I can't see why B&MG should not be approached if they do say "no" (on or off the record) no harm done. Likewise for MMV where we seem to be joined at the hip anyway (but we may be expected to file patents as they do). Seeing as Matt is in London, it should not be too difficult to find out just how welcoming the Wellcome could be....

[LiamCoy]

@mattodd I think either one works, my recollection is that non-profit is a subset of not-for-profit... although we may want to check that!

[MFernflower]

@liamcoy I'd assume the rules depend on the country the organization is established in (Australia vs Great Britain)