[okfn-br] Fwd: [OKFN-Local-Coord] Searching a sustainable donation strategy

[Everton Zanella Alvarenga]

Minha resposta na lista dos coordenadores locais da Open Knowledge pode nos
interessar.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Everton Zanella Alvarenga <everton.alvarenga em okfn.org>
Date: 2015-08-06 12:25 GMT-03:00
Subject: Re: [OKFN-Local-Coord] Searching a sustainable donation strategy
To: Open Knowledge Foundation Local Coordinators Mailing List <
okfn-local-coord em lists.okfn.org>


Hello Pieter and all,

that is an very important topic. My comments and Open Knowledge Brazil
(OKBR) situation bellow.

2015-08-03 5:59 GMT-03:00 Pieter-Jan Pauwels <pieter-jan.pauwels em okfn.org>:


> Our local BE team has been thinking about alternative sources of funding.
> Today we are mainly living and working on project subsidies and commercial
> (partner/sponsoring centric) projects. When discussing how we can generate
> other types of funding, donations came up in the process. Mainly because
> project funding only funds the project itself and the people working on
> them, but doesn’t really contribute to the general organisation and other
> overheads, nor growth and other staff (project or non-project funded)
>


When I first set the strategy for OKBR in Brazil in 2011, our main focus
would be projects (cool, successfull and sustainable). In 2013, with some
OKI support (~5 months of my work as a consultant), we started to set the
local chapter, which was done in September 2013 (2 years in 2 months!).
Even before the the chapter formalization, I found opportunities to work on
projects with key partners offering them services, which could keep us
running for some period in 2014 whilst I searched for projects.

Our model was simply based on projects with a 10% overhead (which is wronf
calculation, now with more experience and organization of our organization
finance) is simply not sustainable. Recently I've met Serdar in Stockholm
and he said there are even studies about it.

One of the things we've tried and are still trying iis core funding. Open
Society Foundations is supporting us to improve our governance, so that we
become a more mature organization to ask for that. So that's our situation
now, a small core team <http://br.okfn.org/time/> (see the discussion on
School of Data) to maintain the organization, which included bank and
finantial expenses (our communication staff have been paid from our
projects).

You can find our activities and finance reports of 2013 and 2014 here <
http://br.okfn.org/relatorios-e-contas-anuais/>. 2013 is in English, but
2014 in Portuguese.



>
> But I do have a lot of questions regarding donations to see if it is even
> worth setting up a donation side of things. Hence the questions below:
>
> Who is accepting donations?
>


OKBR accepts donations <http://br.okfn.org/apoie/>. But, so far, we have
had only a few annual contributions or donations (~5 times, which is
~200-300 USD, way less than the ~ 400.000 USD we have runned with our
projects so far).


> Are you accepting online or offline donations?
>

Hummm, for me everything is online. People can go to an ATM or make a
online transfer.


> How much does it contribute to your organisation, percentage wise?
>

Nothing.


> How much effort do you put in promoting donations?
>

We should put more, but my first 2011 strategy focused on projects, so I
didn't put this on our strategy. Maybe I am wrong and we should involve the
companies in Brazil to make donations, mainly when we develop tools that
can be used for improve the government transparency.


> Do you have a lot of recurring donations (eg. monthly) or mainly one time
> efforts?
>

Our agreement among the ~20 associates of our organization was a annual fee
of ~50 USD. As I said, only a few people paid and I didn't put much effort
on it since it was not significant, as I saw, to the organization
sustanability.

Maybe we should focus on local donors from companies and rich people. But
in Brazil the not for profit still lacks trust from everybody (I cannot
stand why NGOs are seen as symbol of corruption, since companies deals with
much more money and are easier to create), so the donation culture is year
light behind places like USA (an annual market of ~3 BILLION dollars) and
UK.


> How do you handle this technically?
>

I just leave the bank account and other online payment methods. Direct
money transfer doesn't include the costs of online services like paypal.


> What are the donated funds used for? Personnel costs? General costs?
> Community efforts?
>

The core of the organization costs (servers, domains, accountant etc.).
Since it's only a few money, not significant so far.

Everton

Open Knowledge Brazil


>
> Would be good to hear some opinions, best practices and examples.
>
> Kind regards,
> Pieter-Jan
>
> [image: photo]
> *Pieter-Jan Pauwels*
> Community Coordinator, Open Knowledge Belgium
> m: +32 476 66 27 77 <+32%20476%2066%2027%2077> | e:
> pieter-jan.pauwels em okfn.org | w: okfn.be
>
>
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