Global Sponsor Program.

[martinheidegger]

Right now every chapter needs search sponsors by themselves. Which is good because they look for local sponsors. But its also a lot of work and comes with a lot of stress for both the sponsor and the organizer.

I think it would be nice if companies that have global relevance (only companies with global relevance, i.e. github) could get a channel of sorts where nodeschool organizers can ask for sponsorship and with a pre-specified benefit/requirement program. I.e. shirts, stickers, presentation pack... things like that.

I think it could make the organisation of events a lot smoother; what do you think?

[olemis]

FWIW +1

[iancrowther]

@mikeal can we get some funding from the Node Foundation?

How do we apply?

[mikeal]

What exactly would that entail?

[iancrowther]

I could use some funding towards the 2015 nodeschool international-day mini-film

It's been created / edited but the funding fell through so it would be amaze if the foundation could help out. its not a huge sum, but it's a great PR for Node around the world.

[iancrowther]

I was going to setup a crowdfunding / kickstarter etc

[iancrowther]

I realise I've hijacked @martinheidegger thread here..

@martinheidegger please pitchin

[martinheidegger]

@iancrowther Yeah, you've hijacked that. :sweat_smile:

What exactly would that entail?

Not sure if that was addressed to the original topic or to the international day situation. Let me answer as if it were asked to the original topic:

The "global sponsorship" would entail an organization (i.e. Node Foundation) to provide a set of requirements (additionally to being a nodeschool chapter maintainer) that gives chapters access to entitlements. If the organization at some points to not-want-to-offer those entitlements anymore they withdraw the requirements.

I can imagine both pre-, during and post-event requirements. Example of post-event requirement: A picture of all members & an anonymous attendance record of the last held event. Example of during-event requirement: Hang up a poster during event. Example of pre-requirement: Announcement of sponsor at the event signup-page and a survey question.

The entitlements could be stickers or sticker fees, food at the event, meeting spaces (i.e. apple, microsoft, ibm, wework, yahoo ...), transport fees for mentors I could even see financial support for the time of the organizer.

Note: I used the words "entitlements" and "requirements" because I couldn't find a better expression

In any case, this program would be only there to smooth the process and give people access. It was not intended for financing global efforts (like the github work or the international day movie :sweat: )

[mikeal]

that gives chapters access to benefits.

Can you give some examples of these benefits?

[mikeal]

Can I just ask what the problem we are trying to solve is?

Do specific NodeSchool's need funding? Do they need a bank account?

Does the community want to find a way to enforce some kind of quality or impartiality standard?

[martinheidegger]

@mikeal sorry, i changed the wording halfway through from benefits to entitlements. I updated the comment to clarify the language.

[martinheidegger]

I thought I mentioned the problem to solve in the initial issue:

But its also a lot of work and comes with a lot of stress for both the sponsor and the organizer.

To expand on this: we already explain to people how to setup a chapter. And the organizers can with effort (depending on location) try to find sponsors for it (to get beforementioned entitlements/benefits). The purpose of the global sponsorship program would be to find sponsors easier and to make it easier for willing global sponsors to verify/get-in-touch with organizers.

[mikeal]

The entitlements could be stickers or sticker fees, food at the event, meeting spaces (i.e. apple, microsoft, ibm, wework, yahoo ...), transport fees for mentors I could even see financial support for the time of the organizer.

There's a few reasons why I don't think this will be possible.

1. The Node.js Foundation is a non-profit so the administration of funds (i.e. "paying for things") has a lot more process and administration around it than individual or even for-profit companies have.
2. The scale of NodeSchool is pretty incredible, but that also means that the size of this program could become incredibly large. It's also global, which makes sending goods or transferring funds non-trivial to many locales.

One of the reasons NodeSchool has been successful is the relative ease of setting one up. Conversely, it's quite a process to have the foundation setup something similar. Even small events the foundation has put together have been a significant amount of effort, much more than the effort it took for me to run similar things myself in the past, so it's not conceivable that the foundation could administer something the size of NodeSchool.

I also think there's more potential for counter-incentive than we realize. The main reason the foundation doesn't pay developers to work on Node.js Core is because it de-incentivizes many types of participation by the community. Having a line between "foundation sponsored NodeSchools" and all other NodeSchools is problematic, you might as well replace the term "foundation sponsored" with "Official" and you can see what I mean.

[martinheidegger]

@mikael Note that this issue was not meant to be focussing on "Node Foundation". I really had other for-profits in mind (microsoft, github, whatnot). That being said: I know of NPO's here that can justify their efforts if there is a clear evidence of the output and I wonder if clear requirements would make that easier? (Imaging 15 year old organizers at schools)

[olemis]

I do not know what was the original intention , but since the first time I read this issue my interpretation turned out to be on the same page of the role played by the PSF (non-profit) in Python-land . There is a well-established grants procedure and the different working groups, together with the board, team up with prospective sponsors (for-profits as well as non-profits e.g. NumFocus in Scientific Python WG ) so as to foster contributions to conform a predetermined yearly budget. The later is allocated to different events on demand so that the respective organizers will have a baseline amount allowing them to solve most basic needs .

I might be wrong in assuming this to be exactly like PSF's structure and procedures , but IMHO the goal is what matters ...

[olemis]

@martinheidegger , given the initially stated global scope, for practical (legal, taxes, ...) reasons maybe it'd be a good idea for groups to receive the contributions (whatever these might look like) from non-profits .

[mikeal]

@martinheidegger sure, it's not impossible for us to do these kinds of things but I want to stress that having the foundation do it is probably the most difficult path because it is so much more work for a foundation to do this than any other alternative. Your notes about other for-profits is a great idea, and it's much easier for many of them to do this than the foundation.

That said, if there is some kind of neutrality you need to guarantee the foundation might be in a position to do that but it doesn't sound like that is something you're worried about yet.

[martinheidegger]

@olemis Sorry for the late response and :+1: for your input. I will have some reading to do and come back here later.