Tag Archives: sponsorship

Lucas 11:18 am on June 21, 2024
Tags: Flagship WordCamps, , , Sponsor Team, sponsorship,   

Proposal for a Unified Sponsorship Initiative

Purpose: This proposal aims to enhance support for WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. organizers by forming a task force focused on streamlining sponsorship efforts, ensuring sustainability, and improving the overall sponsor experience. This is not intended to diminish the autonomy of WordCamp organizers but to offer them additional resources and support.

Flagship WordCamps have become an essential item in all our calendars throughout the year. They are the largest gathering of WordPress folks in the community and attract a lot of attention from the Media and our partners/sponsors. One of the biggest issues with becoming bigger is the need for more money and therefore more sponsoring activity, while still relying on the work of volunteers to organize this. Selling all the required sponsor spots gets harder and harder from year to year due to inflation and corporate consolidation in the WordPress ecosystem.

Those volunteers are facing the same discussions and questions from year to year when it comes to approaching sponsors:

  • What companies to approach for sponsorship?
  • How can we reach them? Is the list shared?
  • What are the sponsorship packages, what are the benefits to sponsors and what are some rules around them?
  • How can we make sure that sponsorship is sustainable for the community and the sponsor?
  • Why is [ACTION] allowed on WordCamp [Flagship Location] but not in WordCamp [Flagship Location]
  • How to approach this topic?
  • How to handle global sponsors for the flagship even if the rules are written down?

Each flagship is organized by those who apply to be an organizer and therefore follow the call. In the worst case, the whole team is different from the previous year’s and needs to rely solely on the documents of the previous year.

This proposal is to create an initial small task force inside the community that supports sponsorship teams; for now, this would focus on the three flagships (WC Asia, WCEUWCEU WordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event., and WCUSWCUS WordCamp US. The US flagship WordCamp event.) but have relevance to WordCamps and WordPress events, to help streamline the sponsor experience for everyone involved. The proposal is to open a call for volunteers for this task force as well as directly approach community members who might be a great fit. I’ve structured the possible tasks for a task force to work on it:

Sponsoring itself

  • Harmonize sponsoring benefits across the Flagships with fine adjustments to local e.g.: pricing, booth size, local things, …
    • Successful benefit ideas like tweets, social events, booths,…
    • Unsuccessful benefit ideas should be centrally listed.
    • Common & best practice 
  • Establish clear rules for sponsorship
    • Booth regulations
    • Handling larger companies with multiple brands
    • Designing Sponsorship packages for small businesses while ensuring availability
  • Support for Sponsors and WordCamps Global Lead
  • Crafting wording around “Partner” or “Sponsoring” not “Exhibitor” packages

Sponsor Lifecycle

  • CRM of up-to-date sponsoring companies incl. contacts besides the Global sponsors
  • Guidance for first-time sponsors
    • Crafting detailed onboarding and sponsoring documents
  • Support for “frustrated” sponsoring questioning value
    • Example: More visibility by attending than sponsoring
  • Active outreach for potential sponsors outside the current sponsors but benefit from WordPress
  • Crafting detailed onboarding and sponsoring documents

Support for Sponsor Teams

  • Mentorship for Sponsoring Teams, also available as sparring Partners – a global sponsor mentorship team.
    • Focused on Flagships
    • Available for all WordCamps
    • Trainings on learn.wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/?
  • Handbooks on how to approach local companies best
  • Collecting testimonials and ambassadors for the flagships
    • Bring them to the Media Partners 
    • Work with PR Team ahead of Call for Sponsor 
  • Support the sponsor team in the reflection of a WordCamp and centralize their feedback. 

Tooling & Processes

  • Align contract and tooling with Sponsoring benefits
  • Streamlined processes and define the same tools to use for all flagship events, or at least for each one of them
  • Include in the process a survey/inquiry for sponsors that didn’t come back to better understand why

Goals: By implementing this initiative, we aim to:

  • Foster better relationships with sponsors.
  • Attract new sponsors and grow the ecosystem. 
  • Provide a consistent, improved experience across all flagship events.
  • Ensure financial support for the growth of the WordPress community, facilitating impactful, inclusive, and rewarding WordCamps.

TODOs:

  • Better Mentoring for New Sponsors: Provide guidance and community insights.
  • Engage Sponsors: Encourage sponsor participation beyond sponsoring as speakers and media partners.
  • Feedback LoopLoop The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop.: Implement clear communication and feedback mechanisms for sponsor teams.
  • Sponsor Communication: Emphasize the importance of sponsors sharing their work through their booth, recaps and active engagement.

Next Steps

Feedback Deadline: Please provide your feedback on this proposal by July 10th, 2024.

Specific Feedback Needed: Is this initiative worth pursuing? How should the task force be staffed? What are your expectations from this task force?

Post-Feedback Actions: Based on the feedback, if there is general support, we will ask the community team for nominees and open a call for volunteers to form the task force. We aim to establish initial actions before the next sponsorship teams for WordCamp Europe and US begin their work.

Thanks again to @juliarosia @peiraisotta @_dorsvenabili @devinmaeztri for your contributions to this proposal.

#flagship-wordcamps, #global-sponsors, #proposal, #sponsor-team, #sponsorship, #wordcamp
Cate DeRosia 8:10 pm on November 29, 2023
Tags: , , sponsorship,   

Should We Allow Sponsor Demo Rooms or Tracks at Events?

The discussion at WCUSWCUS WordCamp US. The US flagship WordCamp event. contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. sparked conversation around new opportunities events could possibly offer to sponsors. One of them was a place to better explain or showcase their products. 

Today, a WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. proposed this idea in the form of a Sponsor Demo room or track.

In short, sponsors would be given the option to present information of their choosing in the Sponsor Demo room or track. The event would be responsible for highlighting to attendees that this is sponsor-driven content that could include sales pitches. 

What do we think of this idea?

If we like the idea, here are a few questions that quickly come to mind. 

  • How would an event offer it to sponsors?
    • Could it be a stand alone option?
    • Would it need to be part of a package? 
    • Could it be an add on to a package?
  • Should we call it a track or a room to differentiate it from the Speaker Track?

Please leave any additional questions below as well as any feedback or comments.

#discussion, #events-2, #sponsorship, #wordcamps

Courtney P.K. 9:18 pm on October 8, 2021
Tags: , , sponsorship   

Proposal: 2022 Global Community Sponsorship program

tl;dr: Due to the unpredictability in what events are happening and where, the global sponsorship program proposal for 2022 is similar to the pared-down 2021 program, with a single package. Sponsorship of WordCamps will be offered as an add-on, billed quarterly.

Below you will find a proposal draft for the Global Community Sponsorship program for 2022, with one package being offered as an annual commitment.

As the WordPress Community transitions to holding in-person WordCamps, the question arises of how the Global Sponsorship program will accommodate those events. Until we have more predictability in what events are happening and where, we will offer WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. sponsorship per event, billed at the end of each quarter.

Questions? Feedback?

If you have any questions, observations, or critical feedback about this proposal or the program in general, please comment on this post, no later than 15 October 2021. We hope to finalize the program details by 28 October 2021, to allow sponsors time to sign up by the end of the year.

Thanks so much for the hard work, input, and feedback by @angelasjin, @kcristiano, @_dorsvenabili, @sippis, and @courtneypk, with help crunching the numbers from @harmonyromo.

Now onto the proposal!

Continue reading →

#global-sponsorship, #proposal, #sponsorship

Kevin Cristiano 2:54 pm on March 30, 2018
Tags: sponsorship   

First Fundraising Meeting Notes

The first Fundraising Meeting was today at 14:00 UTC.

Log is available https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1522418413000259

The following Tasks were cretaed and assigned:

  • Compile data from central.wordcamp.org and Quick Books relating to Local Sponsor Goals and Local Sponsor Revenue for 2017
  • Will need help from @iandunn and/or @coreymckrill for certain data extraction
  • Review Class reports in QB – keep in mind Camp years do not match Calendar year
  • Get a list of Sponsors by amount received in 2017.  Also see if number of invoices (Camps) is readily available
  • Begin to create surveys for Organizers, Local Sponsors, Global Sponsors

Next meeting is April 12th at 18:00 UTC

 

 

 

#sponsorship

Andrea Middleton 5:48 pm on October 31, 2017
Tags: , sponsorship   

Proposed experiment: allow WordCamp attendees to opt-in to a mailing list to be shared with sponsors

We’re always looking for ways to facilitate our sponsors finding value in supporting WordPress community events, and as the WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. program continues to grow, it’s helpful to explore new ways to acknowledge/benefit sponsors.

I’d like to propose we try out offering a new sponsor benefit at a few WordCamps, over the next 4-6 months: including an opt-in box at registration for attendees who want to share their email address with sponsors so that the attendee can receive special deals and discounts from sponsors.

This would be a completely opt-in feature. Common wisdom says that most of our attendees will not opt-in, but I suspect that we might be wrong about that, and I’d love to have some empirical data on this. The wording would need to be carefully phrased, but a first draft might be:

“Would you like us to share your email address with our top-level sponsors, so they can send you special deals or coupon codes? (yes/no checkbox)” Here’s an example:

This idea came up when I was discussing sponsor benefits with the WordCamp Europe team, in my capacity as their mentorEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues.. Rather than just trying this out with one event, however, I’d like to propose that we recruit 3-5 WordCamps to run this experiment. Trying out offering this benefit in a variety of WordCamps, with different attendee size and locations, would give us better data to use to decide if we want to add this to the list of standard sponsor benefits that WordCamps typically choose from when they’re building their sponsor packages.

All WordCamp organizing teams that wanted to take part in this experiment would need to commit to following a similar practice, so there’s not too much variation in the implementation:

  1. Use standard wording, translated to local language(s) as appropriate
  2. Limit the benefit to limited level(s) of sponsorship (I think just top-level)
  3. Share email addresses to top-level sponsors at an agreed-upon time-before-WordCamp
  4. Report back to the global community teamGlobal Community Team A group of community organizers and contributors who collaborate on local events about WordPress — monthly WordPress meetups and/or annual conferences called WordCamps. on this P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. after their WordCamp is over

I propose we run the experiment between now and June 2018, and if the results are positive, then we can add this as one of the benefits that any local WordCamp team can include in a sponsorship package.

If you have feedback, concerns, questions, and suggestions about this idea, please share them in a comment on this post! If you’re on an organizing team that would like to take part in this experiment, please also comment here! 🙂

#experiment, #sponsorship

Andrea Middleton 7:57 pm on May 20, 2016
Tags: , sponsorship   

Sponsorship and Finances Weekly Report for May 20

Here’s that weekly update — biweekly this time because I was on vacation last week — on the payments and income for WordPress community events that we post on Fridays. This report might get more elaborate as we get the time to build more tools around financial reporting (currently it’s quite manual), so if there’s a level of detail we’re not providing that you’d like to see, please mention it in the comments!

Between May 13 and May 19, here’s what came in:

Ticket revenue via PayPal: $16,379.67 USD (total tickets 364)
Sponsorship income via wire transfer: $9,489.88 USD
Sponsorship income via check: $13,524.78 USD
Sponsorship income via PayPal: $4,612.91 USD

Total revenue (in USD): $139,260.29 CORRECTION: $44,007.24

And in that same period, here’s what went out:

Total number of vendor payments/reimbursements: 21
Total payments (in USD): $37,831.27

Here’s a list of this week’s global sponsorship grants (which are determined at the budget review):

Cologne 1,800 EUR
Sacramento 3,000 USD
Columbus 5,500 USD

As always, if you have any questions, please ask away in the comments!

#finances, #sponsorship

Andrea Middleton 9:42 pm on May 13, 2016
Tags: , sponsorship,   

Sponsorship and Finances Weekly Report for May 13

Here’s that weekly update — biweekly this time because I was on vacation last week — on the payments and income for WordPress community events that we post on Fridays. This report might get more elaborate as we get the time to build more tools around financial reporting (currently it’s quite manual), so if there’s a level of detail we’re not providing that you’d like to see, please mention it in the comments!

Between April 29 and May 12, here’s what came in:

Ticket revenue via PayPal: $33,036.99 USD (total tickets 763)
Sponsorship income via wire transfer: $75,768.92 USD
Sponsorship income via check: $13,018.90 USD
Sponsorship income via PayPal: $17,435.48 USD

Total revenue (in USD): $139,260.29

Number of sponsor invoices paid: 29
Number of sponsor invoices issued: 39
Total invoiced: $266,700.00 USD

And in that same period, here’s what went out:

Due to some changes we’ve made to the back end of the vendor payment tool, I don’t currently have a straightforward way to create a breakdown of what payments were for which event, but here are the totals:

Total number of vendor payments/reimbursements: 46
Total payments (in USD): $56,376.07

Here’s a list of this week’s global sponsorship grants (which are determined at the budget review):

Kyiv 30,000 грн.
Singapore 4,000 Singapore dollars
Belfast 1000 GBP
Phoenix 14,000 USD
Seville 800€
Bucharest 9,800 ROI

As always, if you have any questions, please ask away in the comments!

#finances, #sponsorship, #wordcamps

Andrea Middleton 8:49 pm on April 29, 2016
Tags: , sponsorship,   

Sponsorship and Finances Weekly Report for April 29

Here’s that weekly update on the payments and income for WordPress community events that we post on Fridays. This report might get more elaborate as we get the time to build more tools around financial reporting (currently it’s quite manual), so if there’s a level of detail we’re not providing that you’d like to see, please mention it in the comments!

Between April 22 and April 28, here’s what came in:

Ticket revenue via PayPal: $11,809.12 USD (total tickets 256)
Sponsorship income via wire transfer: $8,204.51 USD
Sponsorship income via check: $4,240.00 USD
Sponsorship income via PayPal: $7,868.66 USD

Total revenue (in USD): $32,122.29

Number of sponsor invoices paid: 24
Number of sponsor invoices issued: 20
Total invoiced: $10,600.00 USD

And in that same period, here’s what went out:

Due to some changes we’ve made to the back end of the vendor payment tool, I don’t currently have a straightforward way to create a breakdown of what payments were for which event, but here are the totals:

Total number of vendor payments/reimbursements: 24
Total payments (in USD): $73,999.88

Here’s a list of this week’s global sponsorship grants (which are determined at the budget review):

Nashik 150,000 Indian rupees

As always, if you have any questions, please ask away in the comments!

#finances, #sponsorship, #wordcamps

Andrea Middleton 3:38 am on April 9, 2016
Tags: , , sponsorship,   

Sponsorship and Finances Weekly Report for April 8

Here’s that weekly update on the payments and income for WordPress community events that we post on Fridays. This report might get more elaborate as we get the time to build more tools around financial reporting (currently it’s quite manual), so if there’s a level of detail we’re not providing that you’d like to see, please mention it in the comments!

Between April 1 and April 7, here’s what came in:

Ticket revenue via PayPal: $22,890.78 USD (total tickets 482)
Sponsorship income via wire transfer: $552.66 USD
Sponsorship income via check: $37,000.00 USD
Sponsorship income via PayPal: $13,819.67 USD

Total revenue (in USD): $74,263.11

Number of sponsor invoices paid: 18
Number of sponsor invoices issued: 27
Total invoiced: $130,500.00 (included global sponsorship invoices for Q2)

And in that same period, here’s what went out:

Due to some changes we’ve made to the back end of the vendor payment tool, I don’t currently have a straightforward way to create a breakdown of what payments were for which event, but here are the totals:

Total number of vendor payments/reimbursements: 10
Total payments (in USD): $24,002.57

Here’s a list of this week’s global sponsorship grants (which are determined at the budget review):

Brighton £1,500.00
Pittsburgh $1,500.00

As always, if you have any questions, please ask away in the comments!

#community-management, #finances, #sponsorship, #wordcamps

Andrea Middleton 9:28 pm on April 1, 2016
Tags: , sponsorship,   

Sponsorship and Finances Weekly Report for April 1 (no fooling)

Here’s that weekly update on the payments and income for WordPress community events that we post on Fridays. This report might get more elaborate as we get the time to build more tools around financial reporting (currently it’s pretty manual), so if there’s a level of detail we’re not providing that you’d like to see, please mention it in the comments!

Between March 25 and March 31, here’s what came in:

Ticket revenue via PayPal: $13,925.76 USD (total tickets 248)
Sponsorship income via wire transfer: $13,419.29 USD
Sponsorship income via check: $3,000 USD

Total revenue (in USD): $52,803.45

New metric alert!  Sponsor invoices issued: 16
Total invoiced: $18,400 USD

And in that same period, here’s what went out:

Due to some changes we’re making to the back end of the vendor payment tool, I don’t currently have a straightforward way to create a breakdown of what payments were for which event, but here are the totals:

Total number of payments/reimbursements: 12
Total payments (in USD): $18,489.01

Here’s a list of this week’s global sponsorship grants (which are determined at the budget review):

NYC    $15,000.00
Nashville    $4,000.00
Kansai    $10,000.00
Montreal    $4,000.00
Ann Arbor    $3,500.00
Ottawa    $1,600.00

As always, if you have any questions, please ask away in the comments!

#finances, #sponsorship, #wordcamps