Yet Another Society
is attempting to organize a campaign to support Damian Conway
and his family for a the year 2001 to work on just Perl. Modules,
speaking engagements, and whatever else he can. Essentially,
the Perl community, through YAS, would be "buying out" the good
doctor's obligations at Monash University in Australia,
along with raising money for travel and expenses.
The estimated cost of all this is USD 55,000. For more
information, including email correspondence between Conway and
Kevin Lenzo, check out http://www.yetanother.org/damian/.
and they send the money where?
hfb on 2000-10-12T20:31:07
You should have the mechanism in place to accept donations _before_ you announce a campaign such as this as attention spans are short. Don't forget to send thank you notes with reciepts for taxes to each and every donor as well as to encourage people to have their employers match their gift if they offer it.
Also, you should offer your annual report on the web site to boost confidence in fiscal responsibility.
I'll send a check for $1000.00 US if you get the ball rolling by next Thursday.
Re:and they send the money where?
pudge on 2000-10-13T01:02:12
Why a Thursday deadline?
This would be easy except for the "fast" deadline
jking on 2000-10-13T03:25:35
This is an excellent idea in general. Just because it's free software doesn't mean that people work for free. Given that Perl6 is
happening right now and that the Damian Conway
RFC's are *all* good, floating Dr. Conway for
a year would be a great idea.
And I have no doubt that had it been floated back in, oh, say July that it would have had an excellent chance of success. But if he needs to have the money by basically yesterday and there isn't any mechanism quite in place to make this work yet, then...it could be tough. I mean, I'm
not sure there is a corporate sponsor out there
who can cover this in a hurry, and 2,000 $30
donations would just take too long unless you can
just type credit card numbers into a secure website or something.
This is pretty frustrating
Re:and they send the money where?
Damian on 2000-10-13T13:05:29
That's an astonishingly generous offer, Elaine. Thank-you.
I thought perhaps I should take the opportunity to explain the nature of -- and reason for -- the rush.
YAS has not been able to accept donations for this project until its tax status was confirmed. But my department at Monash University has now gone into the planning phase for next year, and needs to know within the next week or two whether they'll have my teaching/admin services for 2001 (which they most decidedly won't if the Perl community wants me).
So my department needs a clear indication of what I'm doing next year, which means YAS needs a clear indication of whether the community thinks "buying me out" is a worthwhile thing, and something they would actually fund (I'm not nearly egoistical enough to simply assume that the weird stuff I do is worth real money :-)
That's what's required by next week: pledges of support. Actual cash could come (a little) later.
Meanwhile, I've already been overwhelmed by the support that people have privately expressed for this. Whether or not the project comes together, I am deeply honoured and grateful that so many people seem to believe I would be worth "buying".
Re:and they send the money where?
dumrats on 2000-10-13T14:01:43
Ok, i think we are close on having a CGI based payment/pledge service up, we have also had one
major pledge comfirmed, that would put us halfway along the road to doing this.
Yet again Kurt has worked his ass off for YAS to get this CGI ready,
Greg
Re:This would be easy except for the "fast" deadli
dumrats on 2000-10-13T14:20:41
We've been working on a corporate sponsor (not one you would guess) for some time and it seems they want to give us half
And as well you will be able to type credit card donations into a web page
Greg
Re:and they send the money where?
hfb on 2000-10-13T14:56:45
OK, so...where might people send pledges then?
I'm certain the enthusiasm is there, but if one has to work at finding out how and where their interest my be funneled interest may wane and be lost. The non-profit status pending isn't as important as being able to accept gifts/pledges, send thank you notes with receipts, and keep careful accounting for an annual report. As long as the receipt is clear, you may still use it on your tax return in good faith.
A week really isn't much time. I'd hate to see such a grand opportunity lost.
Re:and they send the money where?
dumrats on 2000-10-13T15:23:40
http://registration.yapc.org
A more formal press release will be released along with a nice set of webpages in the next 24 hours.
Re:and they send the money where?
hfb on 2000-10-13T15:44:43
What if want to make my gift a restricted gift for the sole purpose of this fund and, in the event that there is insufficient interest, would like my money returned?
Also, you might suggest to the *major* contributor that you hinted at earlier, that they make their contribution a matching challenge gift, e.g. they pledge $25k if the community can drum up $25k on their own.
Corporate support is nice but I'd really like to see the community do this without relying on the big spenders for the sake of being able to triumph without goliath.
Re:and they send the money where?
pudge on 2000-10-13T16:34:43
Aw, I was hoping that we would put it up on eBay.
:-)
Re:and they send the money where?
dumrats on 2000-10-14T11:01:08
I'm sure we could make a specific exception for large >=1000usd donations, i don't know why Kevin wanted the clause (and he is probably now in China), but I suspect it is that if we received 5,499 x 10usd and couldn't meet amount it would become an extreme headache to refund 5,499 payments.
The matching challenge is effectively what they are doing, however given the timescales involved this company will be doing it in one lump.
I'll be doing a press-ish release today and adding some more details. Including the mystery sponsor's name!
Re:and they send the money where?
hfb on 2000-10-14T20:19:25
Restrictions on gifts are the whim of the donor. I, and probably others, do not wish to send YAS several thousand dollars for anything other than the fund for Damian considering the 501(c)(3) staus is not yet confirmed and there is no reassuring annual report or accounting of any kind just yet. The "rolled over into other projects" clause doesn't make me feel good and I start to think of TPI. I would feel this way if I were giving $10 as well. Assuming that people will want to give to YAS in the case that the campaign falls short is a bit arrogant. I would suggest giving donors an option to restrict their gift lest you drive off donors you would otherwise have gotten.
And a matching gift is an all or nothing deal. If you raise the amount set by the challenge, then you get it and if you fail, you don't. This sounds more like an outright gift that you are already counting on.
Reason for restriction
kurt on 2000-10-15T16:15:22
Since we are not a very wealthy organization, we have to put this restriction in place for financial reasons. With any credit card transcation, by the time you take into account the merchant provider's discounts and the various other fees, you are looking at a fee of 4-6% per transaction depending on the type of credit card. And that is a fee for both the debit and the credit.
As you can guess, if we ended up raising just shy of the necessary amount, YAS could be stuck with a couple thousand dollars in fees and no money to cover it. Suddenly, Kevin and I would be stuck footing a substantial bill out of our own pocket....
In light of the discontent this has caused, however, I have talked with Greg McCarroll and we may have a reasonable solution. We will give refunds on your contribution less 5%. That way, you still get most of your money back, but YAS is not bankrupted. In other words, we'll split the risk of things falling apart. Also, anyone paying by check can get a full refund if the check is for more that $500.
We put the $500 restriction in place so that people won't all use checks, resulting in me having to write out and mail hundres of checks. For checks less that $500, we will apply the same 5% refund fee.
Hopefully this is an acceptable comprimise.
Re:This would be easy except for the "fast" deadli
swerdloff on 2000-10-16T02:27:31
How complicated is it to just set up a 'Buy Damian' paypal account, or PayX or Yahoo's service? I mean really now.
Re:Reason for restriction
grendel on 2000-10-24T19:05:33
Why not just use PayPal? No fees. Plus, if you had the PayPal signup link on your homepage, every new PayPal user would get $5 and you would receive a $5 referral fee. You could generate gobs of $10 donations that wouldn't cost anyone (except PayPal) a dime.
http://paypal.x.com/
chris
