Apache Fundraising

The fundraising team sets and executes strategy to bring income to the ASF in support of our mission of providing software for the public good within board-approved budgets.

Public Information About Fundraising

• Thanks page (src) - List of existing Sponsors and levels
• Sponsorship page (src) - Overview of of the program
• How to Donate (src) - An easy and quick list of the many ways to give to the ASF

 

Helpful links for volunteers and interested Members:

This collection of links should help get you oriented in the world of fundraising at the ASF.

Additionally, the fundraising team also meets monthly for roughly 90 minutes on a Skype call to cover action items, calendar review and general planning. The agenda for the meeting is posted on Gsuite prior to the meeting. Unfortunately, the meeting day/time is not a regularly reoccuring meeting, so to receive an invite, please contact fundraising@ and the next meeting can be forwarded to you. At the end of the call each month, we set the date and time for the next meeting.

People

• VP Fundraising - public, private (src) - Overview, goals, name(s) and resolution creating role. Appointed by President
• VP Sponsor Relations - public, private (src) - Overview, goals, name(s) and resolution creating role. Appointed by VP Fundraising.
• VP Marketing and Publicity - public, private (src) - Very common touch point both in and out of fundraising
• Accounting - public, private (src) - Handles invoicing and payments with sponsors

Data

• Monthly Reports (published) - Fundraising reports to the President in monthly board reports
• Group listing - LDAP group listing/administration
• Committee listing (src) - Fundraising committee listing/administration
• General Documents - Restricted access. Stored on Google GSuite. Documents intended to share publicly with prospective sponsors.
• Sensitive Documents - Restricted access. Stored on Google GSuite. Various documents containing highly confidential information.
• Master Tracking List - Stored in 'Sensitive Documents' area. Master tracking list of sponsors and key information (renewals, contacts, invoicing, dates)
• This site src, ticket - Overview of our Fundraising activities

 

Lists and addresses (private)

• fundraising@ - Day to day operations of fundraising including renewals, planning, coordination, notes from meetings, general purpose comms with sponsors
• operations@ - Budget and overal coordination under president's purview
• team@treasurer - Handling of Accounting and funds movement tasks
• fundraising-private@ - Highly restricted accesses. Sensitive conversations with sponsors. Anything containing personally identifiable information. Archive and subscription accessible only through ezmlm commands
• contributions@ - An email alias shared among Treasury and Fundraising. It forwards to treasurer@ and individuals on the fundraising committee. Users can be added/removed upon request of VP Fundraising to Infra via #asfinfra or Jira tickets

 

FAQs

A number of questions come up during regular interactions with sponsors and volunteers. This section is a living list of common questions and answers as well as documentation around various policies

What is the runbook/lifecycle of sponsorship?

There are several phases to a sponsorship relationship. The recent touchpoints for each sponsor as well as any information needed is tracked in the Master Tracking List. All activities in the tasks below are noted in the tracking sheet.

1. Identification/searching - Typically done by the whole fundraising team. This phase of the relationship is spent seeking out potential sponsors and establishing initial contact.
2. Courtship - Handled by VP Fundraising, VP Sponsor Relations and often involving VP Marketing and Publicity. This is the most attention-intensive phase of the sponsorship lifecycle. Starting after the initial contact with the potential sponsor, they are presented with information about how/why a sponsorship is right for them and ultimately concludes with a decision to or not to sponsor the ASF. Regular email and synchronous communication occurs: everything from tedius scheduling meetings to in-person conversations with high-level leadership at the sponsor's organization.
3. Ongoing relationship - This phase starts after a decision is made whether to or not to sponsor the ASF
   1. Sponsored (full policy) - Handled by VP Fundraising, VP Sponsor Relations, Accounting and often involving VP Marketing and Publicity. After the terms (level, recurrence, etc) are agreed to:
      1. Agreement - The agreed to sponsorship level and invoice amounts are captured in a sponsorship agreement and sent via electronic signature from VP Fundraising to the sponsorship contact for execution. The agreement may be sent by any authorized member of the Fundraising committee. The sponsor contact may reassign execution as needed and discuss modification of the agreement with VP Fundraising. This is done for both new sponsorships and renewals howto. Upon completion of the electronic signature, the document is automatically sent to Accounting. If agreement execution happens outside of the digital signature platform (print/sign/scan), the Fundraising committee member sending the agreement manually forwards the executed agreement to Accounting and stores the agreement.
      2. Accounting invoices the sponsor and receives payment. There may be additional documents requested (tax) or sponsor setup discussions (vendor onboarding systems) with the sponsor and procurement team. These are handled by Accounting, bringing VP Fundraising and VP Sponsor Relations as needed. Confirmation of payment is communicated to VP Fundraising and VP Sponsor Relations via the fundraising-private email list. VP Sponsor Relations sends a "Thanks" message to the sponsor. VP Fundraising ensures the 'Thanks page' is updated to reflect the sponsor's level of sponsorship
      3. Thereafter, VP Sponsor Relations checks in with the sponsor providing operational updates and thanking them for their ongoing support quarterly. Semi-anually retention asks are made and anually we provide a report and information for a year-end gathering.
      4. Upon renewal time, the cycle repeats returning to the decision point in "ongoing relationship"
   2. Non-Sponsored - Handled by VP Fundraising and VP Sponsor Relations. For various reasons, the decision is made to decline further (or new) sponsorship with the ASF. During an appropriate interval of time (gathered during conversation with the sponsor), further contact with the potential sponsor is made to refresh the relationship and to gague interest in establishing an ongoing sponsored relationshp. Further communications with the potential sponsor is terminated upon their request.
4. Offboarding - Handled by VP Fundraising and VP Sponsor Relations. When the decision is made by the sponsor to end a sponsored relationship, VP Fundraising removes the sponsor's note on the Thanks page (at the appropriate time). VP Sponsor Relations or VP Fundraising reaches out to the sponsor to thank them again for their sponsorship and performs an "exit interview" seeking information if there is any way we could have handled the relationship better. At this point, the relationship enters the "Ongoing, unsponsored relationship" phase.

Who can sponsor the ASF?

This is captured on the main sponsorship page: https://www.apache.org/foundation/sponsorship.html#WhoCanSponsor

In short, this particular policy exists to ensure that Sponsors truly are interested in furthering the Open Source, public good mission of the ASF (and not self-serving means such as SEO).

How do I gain access to Google GSuite?

This access can be granted to any ASF Member. Please send an email indicating you would like access to fundraising@apache.org and the access will be granted as quickly as possible. An account login with <yourid>@gsuite.cloud.apache.org will be created and an activation link will be sent to your @apache.org email address. This link must be used within 48 hours before it expires.

If you have the access and are ready to add someone, navigate to the folder you would like to grant access to and click the "+ Add Members" button and follow the on-screen prompts.

What is targeted sponsorship?

Please download the fundraising policy. The goal of targeted sponsorships is to provide sponsors a means to directly support a specific area of the foundation. This can be anything from particular infrastructure services all the way to hosting a hackathon during a public event. The program is designed to provide recognition for those that support areas of the foundation through non-monetary contributions.

For an internal FAQ of the program, have a look at this document.

What are the important documents I should know?

All of them, of course! But... here's a quick, curated list:

• Policies and templates to get comms out easily and professionally
• Pitch deck - why someone should sponsor the ASF; customized for each pitch
• Meeting notes/agendas from regular fundraising team telecons
• Graphics and content for other sponsor outreach and programs

What vendor-provided services does Fundraising manage/use?

Fundraising manages and uses a few vendor services to do our work. Some services are Targeted Donations to The ASF while others are services specific to Fundraising

This private data is stored in the Fundraising section of foundation-private svn

Any tips for effective use of GSuite?

Sure! Once you obtain an account, you can do the following to "live" out of GSuite for your @apache.org address

• Login to id.apache.org and forward your email to >id<@gsuite.cloud.apache.org
• On Gmail, go your settings->Accounts
• Set the "send mail" option to use your @apache.org account with the outbound server information Infra has published
• Make this send mail as the default account
• Under "When replying to a message:" Check the option to always reply from default address

Are there specific fundraising policies I should know about?

Because we are interfacing with external entities in a sensitive area of operations (financial and PII data), it is important to interact with (potential) sponsors in an official propensity. This is most commonly done by ensuring outbound emails contain a signature with your title at the ASF and relationship to the fundraising team. Synchronous conversations should also be held under the same pretense. While this is not vital to protect the ASF or the sponsor, it does provide you (as a volunteer individual) protections in the highly unlikely event that something goes goes wrong (see: piercing the corporate veil).

How does event sponsorship work?

We have worked up an events planning and support model that seems to work for us. As we grow and improve the processes, we'll keep the following location updated: https://svn.apache.org/repos/private/committers/events/event_sponsorship_process.md

We have also defined an Event Sponsor Ambassador role on the event planning team to ensure our sponsors are supported, connected to other events, and always have a backstop in case anything comes up https://svn.apache.org/repos/private/committers/events/event_sponsor_ambassador.md

How do I edit this site?

Just clone this repo and modify pages under content/pages. It is important to note that each .md file must have a Title and Slug tag at the top to publish to the right location. When composing in markdown, it's important to noate that this site is powered by the ???? markdown parser - be sure to use compatible markdown! Commits to this repo will automatically be published to the site.

What is the process to appoint VP Sponsor Relations?

See the private org chart page for V.P. Sponsor Relations