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Conservancy Blog
Displaying posts tagged supporter
Our fundraiser and awesome Supporters pitching in
by on November 24, 2015
You may have noticed that Conservancy launched a big fundraising campaign this week. As we talk about more fully on our Supporter sign up page, over the past year and in particular since we launched the VMware suit some of our corporate funding has been pulled because we tackle important but controversial issues, like GPL compliance. We have even have had talks blocked or canceled at conferences.
In order to ensure that we can continue our work, we must transition to a primarily individual-supported model. We will continue to seek corporate support, of course, and we're grateful for the corporate donors whose support has continued. But our constituency is the software freedom community, and that's where our support should ultimately come from. It's not enough for us to think that the work we do is right - a significant portion of the public must also agree and be willing to vote with their money. Without that support we simply cannot continue. The 10% that our member projects contribute doesn't cover even one staffer plus basic overhead.
We have structured the campaign with two make-or-break levels: a lower level that will just sustain the organization for a "bare minimum" service plan to our member projects, and a separate, higher level to continue doing copyleft enforcement. If we don't meet these goals we'll be forced to radically restructure.
You can see the names of some of our Supporters who choose to be acknowledged, and they are a very impressive bunch!
One Supporter, the very awesome Christopher Allan Webber took some time to sit down with Bradley and me to talk about the campaign and about GPL enforcement generally. You can hear it as the latest episode of Bradley's and my oggcast Free as in Freedom. It's the first episode of FaiF that we've released in some time, and I'm glad we were able to get it together in time for this important fundraiser.
In the coming weeks we will have a few videos from other Supporters about why they choose to support us. Carol Smith of Google was very kind to do one.
Many thanks to Carol for supporting sofware freedom and our organization! Join Carol and become a supporter of Conservancy today.
Join me for a Supporters Only Dinner in Raleigh, NC on Tuesday, October 20
by on October 14, 2015
Are you attending All Things Open next week? Or, are you local to the Raleigh-Durham area? If so, become a Supporter of Conservancy and email <ato-dinner@sfconservancy.org> to RSVP for an exclusive dinner with me at Tír na nÓg at 218 S. Blount St. in Raleigh. This event is only open to Conservancy Supporters, so be sure to sign up as a Supporter first and then RSVP via email.
Once you RSVP, I'll reply by email and give you details.
If you're already a Supporter, I hope you'll not only RSVP, but also ask a friend to sign up too and join us!
Conservancy Supporters!
by on April 20, 2015
I just have to share this picture from last week in Barcelona. It was fantastic to see Conservancy Supporters showing off their shirts and by proxy their support of Conservancy's activities. I was so happy to hear so much positive feedback on the VMWare lawsuit, filed by Christoph Hellwig. Last month, Donald Robertson got a round of applause during my LibrePlanet keynote just for wearing a Conservancy t-shirt! When we first launched the Supporter program I wrote about how impressed I was by the caliber of the intitial wave of Supporters, and as you can see from the notable folks in this picture, the trend has continued as we more than double our numbers. You can get yours by becoming a Conservancy Supporter today!
Thanks Stefano, John, and Jim plus Carlo Piana for taking the photo!
My Favorite Time to Support Charitable Nonpofits
by on April 15, 2015
Most nonprofits push for donations in December to try to cash in on the giving spirit and the end of the calendar year deadline for tax deductions. Conservancy is no exception - we launched our Supporter program at the beginning of December and promoted that as much as we could until the end of the year. Because this is on everyone's minds, there are a lot of blogposts recommending which charities you should donate to and match challenges lined up to get people excited. While the end of the year is a fine time to contribute to nonprofits, to me the best time to make donations is today. Today is Tax Day in the United States. It's the deadline that everyone scrambles against to file their taxes and hopefully, if this is you, then by the end of today you've made it [1]!
If you got a refund, putting some of what feels like a windfall to a good cause is just the thing. It's nice not to have to worry about remembering to make donations at the end of the year. And if you wish you'd paid less in taxes, it may benefit you next year to make more charitable contributions./p>
Even if you're outside the U.S. or if you're not in a tax situation where charitable donations make a difference to you the donation will make a huge difference to your favorite nonprofits and their ability to budget, as many of them are in the first quarter of their fiscal year.
[1]As painful as it may have been. I'm glad I'm on the FSF's High Priorities Projects Committee to push for inclusion of tax software. It's really upsetting that there's no free alternative.
