[OpenSpending] Financial sustainability of OpenSpending - please share your ideas!

Thu Jun 12 19:38:50 UTC 2014

Hi all,

OpenSpending has seen significant growth since its formal launch in 2011.
In the last year alone the amount of data in OpenSpending has doubled (from
12m to 25m records today) and we anticipate this growth continuing.

This is a cause for celebration but is also putting significant strain on
the infrastructure. The OpenSpending Steering group
<http://community.openspending.org/about/governance/members-of-the-steering-group/>
therefore set out on its last call
<https://docs.google.com/a/okfn.org/document/d/1jCB-RquGYeW9mm466ViucMRjggbCxa0pGZDH5JThcRc/edit#>
to discuss these challenges in greater detail in this document
<https://docs.google.com/a/okfn.org/document/d/1r3KHUiQ4g4av_E22wIZLEvG_m9OtbKn13o98bv70nnY/edit#heading=h.w9mt2xsythb3>
- see also below.

For the last several years, Open Knowledge has been able to sponsor the
entirety of the core infrastructure (servers, sysadmin, essential bugfixes)
thanks both to the limited size of the project and the great support of the
Knight Foundation for the SpendingStories project from 2011-2013.

With the increasing technical demands and the ending of that support we need
to secure additional resources (whether financial or in-kind) to support
OpenSpending Project and its infrastructure going forward.

*Options for Securing Support*

A few models have been outlined as ideas for further consideration:

   -

   Sponsors/Partner/Member organisations / subscription model
   -

      For this case we have drawn up a draft OpenSpending Project
      Sponsorship Partners Outline
      <https://docs.google.com/a/okfn.org/document/d/17NHmQzEb_zOT5NAei-IkQTgWMdiOvD5ulBQIw0pptoU/edit#heading=h.wjyni2paf88v>
      -

      These could be companies, NGOs, IGOs, funders or others
      -

      For NGOs may not directly sponsor but may secure support as part of
      existing or new grant-funding
      -

   Community Volunteers e.g. for sysadmin
   -

   Crowd-funding / with funding targets set across countries
   -

      May be some specific communities who are interested
      -

   Donations
   -

      How to collect and administrate these?
      -

      Would we need a campaign?
      -

   Please add your suggestions here!

We want to hear your thoughts and ideas about how the OpenSpending project
could be made more financially sustainable in this thread or with comments
directly in the document
<https://docs.google.com/a/okfn.org/document/d/1r3KHUiQ4g4av_E22wIZLEvG_m9OtbKn13o98bv70nnY/edit#heading=h.w9mt2xsythb3>?

You can also comment on the draft OpenSpending Project Sponsorship Partners
Outline
<https://docs.google.com/a/okfn.org/document/d/17NHmQzEb_zOT5NAei-IkQTgWMdiOvD5ulBQIw0pptoU/edit#heading=h.wjyni2paf88v>

*Next steps*
We will discuss these proposals until the next OpenSpending Community call
on *Wednesday June 25th*. After the call we will publish it on the governance
page <http://community.openspending.org/about/governance/> of the
OpenSpending Community site.

Looking forward to hear your thoughts!

Best,
Anders

-- 

* Anders Pedersen Knowledge Development Lead  |  skype: anpehej  |  @anpe
<https://twitter.com/> | 001 202-815-0149 *

*The Open Knowledge Foundation <http://okfn.org/> Empowering through Open
Knowledge http://okfn.org/ <http://okfn.org/>  |  @okfn
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OpenSpending | http://openspending.org | @openspending
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