About this page
The purpose of this page is to document how sponsorship issues are being addressed across the Barcamp community worldwide. It is intended to be a living, breathing guideline for all you *camp organizers out there.
As of 2007/10/10, this is still very much a work in progress. As much as possible, the initial content was pulled out of the mailing list as well as various blog posts on the topic.
As always, please add your thoughts and help fill in the gaps. Thank you!
Best practices
Coming out of the original BarCamp, a number of guidelines have been established with regard to sponsors and the support they provide.
- Sponsor participation: Try to focus on (local) sponsors who can actually attend and participate in some way. (Source)
- Limits: Limit cash contributions
- Used to be $250, recently was $300 at BarCampBlock, but has occasionally been higher elsewhere
- This is great because it means that no one "owns" BarCamp, and we get to keep the great community vibe. (Source)
- Another reason this is a good idea: The little guys (startups, individuals) can contribute on a level playing field with the big guys (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft etc.)
- Diversity: Many small sponsors are better than a few big ones.
- Encourage in-kind donations: Request that sponsors order food and other food stuff directly, minimizing the organizer's duties and responsibilities as well as the amount of money they touch. (Source)
- Chunking: Chunk (or microchunk) your sponsorships. Break your budget items into manageable chunks that companies can "adopt". For example, let one company pay for the lunch, and another for shirts, etc. Chunking is nice because it means the companies can write checks directly to the vendors, and you never have to touch any cash. This limits your personal liability and makes companies feel safer. (Example: BarCampRDU, Source)
- Don’t get anyone’s company books involved. Too messy. Either deal in all cash or get a special paypal account. At the end of the day, you don’t want to be holding extra money. Best to get people to sponsor things like chair rentals, a meal, etc, and never touch the money yourself. (Source)
- Transparency: List all incoming donations (cash and in-kind) as well as all outgoing costs on the wiki.
Variations
Other ideas folks have come up with locally:
- Provide various sponsorship levels, or tiered sponsoring (Example: BarCampLA-4, Source)
- Put sponsor logos on the t-shirts (Example: BarCampDallas, Source
- Charge a small sign-up fee (e.g. using Eventbrite). Sometimes $15 will ensure that people come after signing up. (Source)
Case studies, success stories etc.
Share your experiences here. What worked? What didn't? What modifications did you have to make in order to get your *camp off the ground?
Name of *camp
Your story here...
