Subject: Re: Pls Support Conservancy: https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/

From: Jeff King <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2016 10:33:02 -0500

On Sun, Jan 17, 2016 at 07:08:28AM +0100, Michael Haggerty wrote:

> > Git receives a myriad of important services (see
> > https://sfconservancy.org/members/services/ ) from Conservancy.  We
> > have relied on Conservancy since 2009 to provide them, and we ask
> > that you support them.  While Git gladly contributes 10% of our
> > project's gross revenue to Conservancy's general fund, (while
> > Conservancy maintains and administers the other 90% in collaboration
> > with us to advance the Git project), that 10% of contributions from
> > all Conservancy's member projects doesn't add up to enough to even
> > employ one full time person, let alone the already overworked staff
> > of three that Conservancy has.
> 
> Do we have an idea whether the Git project's 10% contribution is
> covering its own costs to the SFC? 10% sounds rather low to me, given
> the legal and administrative services that they provide.

I'm not sure whether we have good numbers there. I think the most
"expensive" thing Conservancy does for us is legal services, most of
which has been for the Git trademark (preparing the application, helping
write the policy, dealing with requests, etc). I don't know whether they
log the hours for that or not. I've cc'd Bradley, who can probably say
more.

> Let's consider contributing more (e.g., 20%) of the Git project gross
> revenue to SFC.

I think that's a reasonable idea. We don't spend much of our money, so I
don't think it would make a big impact on Git's finances. On the other
hand, we don't _have_ much money in the first place. I think we have on
the order of $15K collected over the last several years. So another 10%
would only be $1500, or only a few hundred dollars per year.

Another option would be to give a lump-sum of Git money occasionally,
after seeing how much we have, upcoming expenses, etc. Besides a little
bit for trademark fees (to the USPTO), I think our only expense is
generally travel assistance. We have Git Merge coming up, and a couple
people have asked me about assistance to the developer's summit. So I'd
probably want to hold off on any lump-sum giving until we've allocated
that money.

We may also be able to fulfill those requests without touching Git money
at all (e.g., by asking conference sponsors to chip in for developer
travel). In general, we could also probably bring in more money by
actively soliciting donations. We haven't so far, mostly because Git
itself doesn't really do anything with the money (so there's a donation
link on the git-scm.com site, but it's not very prominent).

Last year the ticket money from Git Merge went entirely to Conservancy.
Given the number of companies that use or build around Git, I suspect
soliciting medium-to-large donations from companies would probably be
productive.

-Peff