On fundraising
April 20, 2008 – 5:04 pmHome from the MySQL User Conference and the Bay Area. Jetlagged to the back of the moon as usual (I really have a problem with jetlag) and trying to stay awake. Anyway, my keynote went well – from a short video clip taken by Zack Urlocker, I can see that I had decent charisma on stage, I got lots of good feedback in the form of handshakes, though not as much in the form of blog posts. Either that, or I’m using the wrong search terms (”Falkvinge” is a GUID, so that’s usually sufficient).
Fortunately, I didn’t find any annoying notes as I opened my luggage this time.
Anyway, I’m not keynoting in the Bay Area just because it’s fun to keynote, but also because there’s lots of potential funds for these issues right there. It’s probably the best area on the planet to find people that both support the issues as such and have cashed out big. We’re chronically struggling with funding — we have enough to cover minimal expenses (a regular income of €2,000 monthly) but not nearly enough to pay a single wage. It would make a world of difference if we could start taking our activists – including me – off their daytime jobs and full-time onto this.
We’ve been trying many ways to accomplish this. Currently, we’re getting by through asking supporters to donate €10 a month, and we have about 200 takers. Previously, we received a few single donations that were relatively large — one of €40,000 has kept us going since 2006.
Suggestions for fundraising are always welcome. At a minimum, we’re hoping to have a staff of three people (two evangelists who do nothing but talk and write, and one admin). This would require a monthly income of about €25,000.
One seasoned person at the MySQL User Conference suggested I should write a book. It might not fund the movement, but might fund my own rent and bills. It might be something I’d like to do regardless of whether it funds me or not. I wonder if Tim O’Reilly would publish?
2 Responses to “On fundraising”
O’Reilly usually have animals on their book covers. I suggest a parrot for your book, should they accept to publish it.
By Rikard on Apr 21, 2008
Jet lag.. You may find this PDF (in swedish) intersting: Ljusets betydelse för pigghet, trötthet och sömn.
Most people have a biological day (and night – “dygn” in swedish) of 25 hours. This biological clock is constantly tuned by the sun and our activities. One might think it is strange, that we have a clock that needs to be constantly adjusted to match the planet we live on. But this is quite genious, since this is what makes us able to adapt to changes – like travel over timezones. I guess the moore the lenght of your day is off, the faster you can adapt. But in your case, you could just be a morning person, or maybe have a day length shorter than 24 hours, and thus handle eastboud travels better, like Russia, India, China or Japan.
And Rick, do not buy all that crap sales people say about light treatment, just to make you buy some stong lamps. In some hospitals they have light treatment rooms with 10000 lux strong light, but ordinary sunshine is about three times that.
In 10000 lux a camera at iso-100 would need a shutterspeed of 1/15s at an aperture of 16 to reach an average exposure, a sunlit object at the the same iso and aperture would be OK with only a 1/125s exposure. So, take a walk outside insted. That will give you both activity and light treatment. It has to be a quite heavy overcast day to be as “dark” as 10000 lux.
By steelneck on Apr 21, 2008