[kde-community] KDE fundraisers and things we've learned

[Mario Fux]

Good morning dear KDE people

After KDE's first fundraiser (crowdfunding attempt) in 2012 [1] we had (or 
it's still ongoing) six more this year:
- For the Randa Meetings 2014 [2]
- For Krita: open source digital painting | Accelerate Development [3]
- For Tupi: 2D Animation Software for Everyone! [4]
- Make the World a Better Place! - KDE End of Year 2014 Fundraising [5] 
- New Unified Graphics for GCompris [6]
- Kommander [8]

Did I forget one? And all these had different ratios of success. 

One can see it from the perspective of distracting each other and fighting for 
the audience. But I'd see this as a rather destructive way of handling this 
discussion. I would like to talk about the opportunities we miss(ed), we can 
and should learn from each other, base new fundraisers on the what we've 
learned before, use our strength like the KDE community as a social network, 
the dot.kde.org as one of our bigger communication channels, so let's crowd 
distribute the information for our crowd funding. We can and will do better 
than we do now.

What we definitely need is better coordination and communication. What do you 
think, would a fundraising workgroup help? Not really a group that's doing a 
fundraising but that's there to help, coordinate and teach and distribute 
their knowledge.

Additionally we should add it to our Manifesto. Money is not an easy topic but 
avoiding it doesn't solve the problems. And if people don't know about certain 
things like that they should coordinate with KDE e.V. in the case of money 
they won't. So it's on us to tell the community and tell new members of the 
community.

Proposal:
Addition to the Manifesto of KDE [7] and there to the Commitments section. 
Something like: all KDE projects coordinate their financial "work" (better 
wording?) with the KDE e.V. (board?)

Let's improve together, share your knowledge and happy holidays
Mario

[1] https://pledgie.com/campaigns/18045
[2] https://www.kde.org/fundraisers/randameetings2014
[3] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/krita/krita-open-source-digital-
painting-accelerate-deve
[4] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/tupi-2d-animation-software-for-
everyone/
[5] https://www.kde.org/fundraisers/yearend2014/
[6] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/new-unified-graphics-for-gcompris/
[7] https://manifesto.kde.org
[8] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/676098424/kommander-point-and-click-
application-development