Fundraising, open source, licensing

Plone Foundation
1

Continuing the discussion from Django turns 20:

I am not on the board, but ... :slight_smile: in your earlier post it sounds like you're thinking of ways to apply for grants. That can be quite time consuming, especially for an already stretched thin group.

Some non-profits hire someone as a grant "coordinator" whose job is to apply for grants and hopefully at least pay for their own salary/stipend.

Similarly, an executive director is often the main (or only) paid person, and their job is to go out and fundraise and, again, at least pay for themselves.

In terms of more diverse fundraising, there can be merchandising, paid training (e.g., on an online platform). It's been tossed around (and attempted) to build a paid hosting platform for Plone sites.

My perhaps cynical take on these often unmet needs/wants is that because we are such an ideologically decentralized project & community that made the explicit choice not to be like so many other so-called open source projects that are heavily backed by a single for-profit corporation, and have had to struggle to get things done on a purely volunteer basis, I think it could be time to experiment with that "backed by a corporation" model. Yes, it has its philosophical downsides but some of them have thrived...

There have been recent thoughts shared by Bruce Perens about what's been going wrong with open source, e.g.

2

I think you've missed my points.

Grants

Writing a grant is usually not difficult or time consuming, once you've done it a few times. I've helped apply for several grants for a local non-profit, and the information is usually the same across applications. Last year I did most of the work to apply for the Google Season of Docs for Plone, and I reused material from both Plone and GSoD itself. We didn't get selected. I'll try again next year, as we can pretty much reuse what we submitted last year.

That's the key. Much of the grant writing material is reusable. It's easily adaptable to specific grants or programs.

I would like the Board to produce a Grant Writing Kit (reuse our GSoD or GSoC material), then publish to its members that the Board will actively collaborate with members to apply for a grant to develop any component of Plone that aligns with its road map.

Employees

I would prefer the Board first tap its members as grant writers before hiring someone to raise funds out of which that person would be paid. Hiring staff has risk and requires a lot of time from Board members. Of course, if the Board is actually considering this option, then they'll need to apply for a grant anyway because it has insufficient cash on hand to hire someone even part-time. It does not have sufficient cash on hand to pull this off, and has nowhere near the resources of the Django Software Foundation which has a paid Fellowship Program. Nonetheless, I think it would be a good goal if the required resources appear in the future.

New ideas

I would like the Board to consider crowd-source fundraising through Polar. From my linked post:

Polar.sh allows funding specific GitHub issues and saying how much money would be needed to fix them. See discussion at polar.sh - funding specific issues · collective/icalendar · Discussion #697 · GitHub . This would be an interesting fundraising experiment to compensate developers for their time, so they can take out their sweetie on a date night.

This option also serves as a poll for Plone feature development. Desirable features get pledges to fund.

Blockers

There seems to be resistance within the Board that the Plone Foundation shall not pay people to develop Plone. I assume that that might have been done in the past and ended badly. But neither of these options that I propose involve the Plone Foundation directly hiring someone, nor paying out of its own budget. Time commitments are minimal, there is no financial cost to the Foundation, and there is no risk. Right now it's a lost opportunity.

In Plone, the blockers to diverse fundraising include the following.

  1. Members don't know that they can take the lead on a grant application to enhance Plone.
  2. The Board does not actively solicit requests for grant applications.
  3. The Board has not actively solicited, nor responded to, new ideas for fundraising from its Members.
2 Likes
3

I totally agree with @stevepiercy. There are tons of financing outside. I just add that there are some of them are private financing, others are public finances. Both requires grants and can be exploited to develop software, systems, best practices, standards and good practices.

4

Thanks for laying out your ideas for me :slight_smile:

Good ideas!

If we had multiple individuals applying for grants, it would be nice for them to coordinate and share knowledge, text, etc.

It's not just the current board members who are wary of paying people to do things that others volunteer to do. It can be tricky to implement without disincentivizing volunteers.

We have done crowdfunding for specific items before, like getting someone to a conference, getting a Windows installer built (after we had had one for years and then a spell during which we did not). Someone had to have the idea and then had to promote the crowdfunding campaign.

I don't know if the board has discussed these ideas specifically. I would ask them and see. Or I would circulate a draft proposal and see if I could get feedback and more folks on board.

5

Could you point out some examples?

6

In the context of contributing code and documentation, this statement is just weird.

First there are two questions that you need to ask of this audience.

  1. Why do you contribute code and documentation to Plone?
  2. Why do you not contribute code and documentation to Plone?

To answer Question 1, common responses include the following.

  • My employer or clients pay me to implement features and bug fixes.
  • I want to learn new skills and technology.
  • I want a new career.
  • I want to pad my resume.
  • I want to pass my course.
  • I want to participate in GSoC.
  • I enjoy hacking on and creating things.
  • I enjoy giving to a community that appreciates my work without receiving financial compensation.
  • I enjoy the interactions with other community members, and sometimes even making a few friends.
  • It's fun!

Paying someone to contribute code or documentation that other people volunteer to do would not change the volunteers' reasons one bit. In fact, I think it would incentivize them to contribute. That's because of responses to Question 2.

  • I need to pay bills.
  • I have too many other demands for my free time.
  • I would rather ride a bike, climb a mountain, garden, dance, anything but sit at a computer for one more second.
  • I am burned out on open source from volunteering too much.
  • When someone else got paid for what I volunteered, I quit donating my time because it devalued my contributions, said no one, ever. See responses to Question 1.

In Plone, for the work that people were paid, it was for doing stuff that no one was volunteering to do. Financial compensation incentivizes volunteers to participate, because it helps eliminate the single greatest reason to not contribute, that being economic.

Economic reality today is drastically different from when I first started in the 1990's. This has become progressively and exponentially worse in recent times. We went through record inflation and price increases not seen since the Great Depression. Corporate greed is rampant, and the economic divide between the ultra-rich and people just surviving has widened. People have to work multiple part-time jobs, moonlight, or take on a side hustle to make ends meet.

All that has motivated me to continue asking the Board to help its members raise funds on behalf of Plone. I have previously applied for GSoD and will apply again next year. I suggested Polar.sh as a way to fund work on issues. I also requested at least four times this year that the Board collaborate with me to apply for grants to pay for people to work on anything for Plone, but the follow up has been disappointing, so I stopped asking. I don't know what's going on with the Board, but it just seems the current Board members aren't interested. Maybe that will change with new Board members.

2 Likes
7

Please add specific funding sources to Apply for grants to fund Plone development.

8

Good analysis, but I think you are overlooking the fact that there is some interaction between those two orthogonal things. If I'm volunteering to do something, but I know someone else is doing the same but is being paid for their time, I might decide not to do it as much or at all since someone else is paid and I am not, and I could be doing something else for which I am paid.

I don't think there is always zero overlap between what we might decide needs to be paid to get done and what is already being done by volunteers.

For example, we have a revived newsletter that a volunteer on the marketing team (hi Astrid!) is doing a lovely job of creating and editing and sending out. What if we wanted it to go out more frequently and our volunteer is not able to do it that often?

We have volunteers writing documentation, but we are still missing a user guide (OK, bad example, as Paul and I are working on that). Had we not known of this effort, we might have decided to hire someone to collate existing Plone/Volto user material from companies or consultants and put it together into one (hopefully more comprehensive) guide.

By "we", I'm just coming up with these ideas and haven't run them by anyone, so don't yell at me.

In both those cases, there is overlap between what is needed and what is being done.

9

The board doesn't have to decide on everything we (the community) do. There are specific things the board is required to decide on, but we are free to organize ourselves and take action. If I were on the board and someone handed me a check to deposit into the Foundation account, unless it was somehow dirty money or otherwise violated a rule applying to 501c3 I would say thank you and deposit it. :slight_smile:

Could you put together your ideas where we could add/comment on them? (if you haven't already) The other part of it would be making a plan on how to execute your (prioritized) ideas.

10

ah, here it is...

11

That's a lot of "if"s and "might"s.

Based on evidence from the Django Software Foundation's Fellowship Program, although that statement might be true (it's very difficult to prove or disprove), the end result is that there is still a huge amount of volunteer participation within Django. This reasoning for not supporting payment of individuals for working on Plone is given far too much importance, and gets in the way of ensuring Plone's future in an ever worsening economic situation.

12

It must be involved with anything involving money. Money is a good incentive to get work done on Plone. The Board can do a lot more with how it receives funds. It can also set expectations in written agreements or contracts for any paid work. We have PLIPs from which the Board can select what gets worked on.

I think that paying someone to manage a PLIP or push it forward from its stuck state is not a bad thing. If a volunteer who was working on it gets grumpy from not getting paid, then why didn't they apply for a grant, seek funding, or propose a funding solution to the Board?

Side note, if you have not seen this PLIP, you really should read it before you go full speed ahead with a user manual: Create User Manual with screenshots and videos for Plone 6 · Issue #3987 · plone/Products.CMFPlone · GitHub

13

The board is specifically NOT supposed to be managing Plone development directly. The plips I scrolled through are development (or user guide) related.

(And that's what PLIPs are supposed to be... they were originally reviewed and approved by the framework team, not the board, though the board had a member who was designated as liaison with the framework team).

14

What would "managing" a PLIP (or pushing one forward) entail? I can't imagine doing it now other than by trying to get a developer to work on it, but if I was not able to do the work myself, I don't see the value I would be adding.

The board has to be dealing with pretty high level issues, so if any idea has a hope of being adopted, it would:

  • be proposed as a digestible plan
  • have one or more candidates identified to execute the plan

Otherwise, speaking as a bitter, crusty former Board member (I jest... I think), it'll be hard for a board to take action.

Will you be in Brasilia? We should talk in person.

15

Correct. However, as I understand it, the Plone Foundation Board is responsible for the budget of Plone. Correct me if that is not true.

Most grantees, Polar.sh, or other entities require that the applicant be the Plone Foundation because it owns Plone's code. Many also require that the applicant be a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

From About the Plone Foundation :

The Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that exists to protect and promote Plone. We provide support for development and marketing and are modelled after similar ventures such as the Apache Software Foundation.

When a team no longer exists or functions, such as the Framework Team, then where does its responsibility fall? I know there's been talk about rebooting this Team as reported in Board and Steering Circle minutes, but there have been no announcements.

Sadly, I won't be able to make it to Brasilia, but I will participate remotely whenever possible.

16

You're right, and the board manages the funds, presumably so there are sufficient funds to continue its mission to promote and protect Plone. But it doesn't mean that the board has to be directly involved in all aspects that bring in money. The board is interested in the sponsorship team but doesn't need to be represented on it nor is there an official liaison to it. Other sources of income could come in similarly without board involvement. The Plone merchandise store is not as good an example of board-independent revenue streams because it is done by the marketing team, which has a board liaison.

17

I'm not up to date on wha's been happening on this.