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budgetHere's the location for budget-related discussion. Any suggested budget items can be added to the |
Would you be opposed to advertising?
I think advertising and sponsors could bring in some revenue.
I have no idea how much such a thing would cost. We should reach out to Rich Cowan of organizer's collaborative. I'll do that.
who signs the checks?
And I'll reach out and touch the LaborTech folks.
One practical question we should get out of the way early - what's going to be the name on the checks? Should one of our first expenses be setting up a bank account for the conference, or should we try to find a group that would act as the main sponsor in terms of handling the $$$?
Getting sponsors to kick in some bucks if needed is a great idea. Advertising I'm not so sure about - not on principle, but because I'm not sure it's going to be a big enough event for it to make sense. I guess I'm envisioning a turnout in the neighborhood of 50-100 people; maybe I'm being pessimistic?
Sponsors/advertising one in the same
I didn't mean for there to be a distinction between sponsors and advertising. Sponsors would get little ads on the conference web site, etc.
If UMass Labor Research is interested, I would guess they would probably handle the financial aspects. Though that might open up a whole new level of bureaucracy that we'd rather not deal with. I've e-mail Susan Moir here and invited her to chime in.
Conference organizing on wiki
I know of several instances of that, but the interesting thing is Brandon made open all accounting at our confernce in February - http://recentchangescamp.org/BalanceSheet
We had 120+ at the conference. It was OpenSpace and free, we provided many rooms (doubles) to people and even gave a travel award or two. Obviously it is a different conference, but just to through in my 2 cents! :-) - Mark
Funding
I know many conferences fund themselves by selling table space to vendors. This isn't a bad idea as long as it isn't vegomatic or the amazing butt builder. The other idea is for unions to become sponsors which will happen if it is of general interest and educational.
Very cool
I like that open accounting system. Thanks for the link.
Fundraising goal of $10,000?
How about if we just come up with a hard number of $10,000? The conference Mark mentioned raised about $13,000 with $2,000 left over. They were also able to pay for rooms for some attendees.
sponsors
Maybe the best way to get the ball rolling would be to line up a couple of official union sponsors. Maybe the Boston Central Labor Council? I don't know what they're financial situation is these days (I'm guessing it's uncertain) but just getting their official blessing might make it easier to get others on board.
I'm willing to sponsor
Business has been pretty good. I don't know how much, yet, though. I'm hoping at least $1,000 but don't put that down yet. I'll know better as we get closer.
I think between all the councils we might get $1K or so.
CLCs
I'd hope we could do a little better than that. Maybe we could work on getting on the agenda at each council meeting in MA over the next several months and try to hit them up for $500-$1000 apiece. It would also be a good way to identify more non-technophobic people and the council level and try to lure them into the CoD community.
Plus there's the side agenda of encouraging them to set up Drupal sites so we can start linking all the local labor communities together.
I like 10K as a minimum budget. As we start putting it together, we should probably differentiate between essentials and luxuries - for instance, we probably don't know at this point if we'll be able to fly in any speakers/presenters from outside.
Unlikely to get that kind of support
Bill,
Our own labor council is hurting and the even the Mass AFL-CIO isn't helping to support many causes because of the huge shortfall they are facing. We'd have much better luck appealing to individual unions.
Yeah, you're probably right
Back when I was marketing web sites (and getting in touch with my inner lack of business skills) money was the big impediment at more than one council.
But maybe it would be worth the effort to solicit endorsements anyway - that might help open the doors with individual locals. And I think we should definitely encourage each council to send someone to the conference - maybe even have a workshop specifically on using technology at the CLC level?
For the moment, I think the most immediate task is to recruit a few more folks to the organizing committee. Then our first decision will probably be whether to constitute ourselves as the main sponsor or try to find an existing organization to serve in that role...