Meetup fees

[Jesse Cooke]

Renewal fees are due next week, 8/26. $89.94 for 6 months. I (happily) paid last time, but it's kinda spendy and I don't know how much we've really been using it. 196 members, not much use besides announcements.

Thoughts?

[Chuck Vose]

I think we have that much left over from the anniversary party. Since I haven't sent to to stumptown yet let me take a look and see how much was left. :)

I'll get back to you today about that.

Fwiw, I think we should keep it. At least so new people to town can find us and find calagator. Public service. :)

On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 9:04 AM Jesse Cooke <je...@jc00ke.com> wrote:

Renewal fees are due next week, 8/26. $89.94 for 6 months. I (happily) paid last time, but it's kinda spendy and I don't know how much we've really been using it. 196 members, not much use besides announcements.

Thoughts?

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[Jesse Cooke]

Thanks Chuck.

I'm not opposed to keeping it, but if we are keeping it maybe we can find a way to use it more.

[Jesse Cooke]

Hey Chuck,

Any news on the Meetup fees? Renewal is on Wed. Thanks!

[Rico Jones]

I think the Meetup group is important and I'm happy to chip in a bit for the fees. I just can't do it until month end. Not sure if that helps or not.

Sent from my iPhone

[Chuck Vose]

No. I failed at looking that up. Let me sneak away from work and do it presently.

[Chuck Vose]

Okay, here's the total stats. 

# Crowdcompass [PAID]

142.70 - decorations

40 - gf cupcakes

# RF [PAID]

200 - cupcakes

# John [PAID]

125 - cake

75 - magic cards

# Epicodus [PAID]

182.50 - cupcakes

Total Out: $765.20

Total In: $800

Left: $34.80

I can send that wherever we as a list decide. Any strong feelings one way or the other? 

[Shawna Scott]

+1 meetup fees

[Kirsten Comandich]

Yeah, I think keeping the meetup group is a good idea for new people to find us.

Thanks!

[Jesse Cooke]

Looks like Sam Shiffman donated $13.37 back in late May. I'll apply that, plus the leftovers from the birthday party. I'll also see if I can open it up via Meetup to whoever wants to donate to help cover the costs.

Chuck, is that in cash or in an account somewhere?

[Jesse Cooke]

OK, so after poking around a bit, looks like Meetup takes almost 10% when a contribution goes through them. That's a lot. It also looks like the subscription is tied to my card, which is not a big deal.

That being said, anyone that wants to contribute should probably Google Wallet, Square Ca$h or Paypal me their contribution so we can avoid fees. That sound OK with everyone?

I'll fire up a ledger on the site.

[Chuck Vose]

Sent moneys via square cash. 

Let's try to figure this out by next time, but if not, it's not too hard to get a ragtag group to donate the funds. Perhaps we should just have a special sticker drive each 6 months :)

[Jesse Cooke]

Sticker-drive would be fun! Should we build an app for that? ;)

[Chuck Vose]

Well, obviously. :)

Seems like it might be a micro kickstarter clone. This isn't the last time we'll need to raise moneys, but each time it's slightly different.

My question is whether you want to build this or if you want to spread the responsibility amongst some volunteers? Probably more work for you up front, but less maintenance down the road since others will know how it works.

My other big question is whether we have stickers that are sufficiently uncommon or if we need to make something for this?

-chuck

[Kirsten Comandich]

And I think we should have t-shirts. ;)

[Rico Jones]

I would buy an “I <3 PDX.rb” t shirt in about 30 seconds. Just sayin’.

[Chuck Vose]

Do we know and trust any designers that could do this?

[Jesse Cooke]

I whipped up a campaign on Teespring: https://teespring.com/pdx-ruby

I haven't marketed it yet, but thought it could be a good place to start.

[Chuck Vose]

Rad! Nice work Jesse. I like the gray one the best.

I also like that you set the number at 4 or so; I think it's important that we stay a tiny bit in the red. Each and every dollar we take in should be obviously tied to some goal for now. If we find more fund raising needs we can build up the muscles needed for donor stewardship, but right now I think we can avoid it if we don't have any extra money floating around.

But if others want to do more with fund raising, I think we should get together and talk about it!

[Jesse Cooke]

On Wed, Aug 26, 2015 at 8:55 AM Chuck Vose <vos...@gmail.com> wrote:

Rad! Nice work Jesse. I like the gray one the best.

Thanks, this was my first shirt on Teespring, and the design tool is a bit quirky. 

I also like that you set the number at 4 or so; I think it's important that we stay a tiny bit in the red. Each and every dollar we take in should be obviously tied to some goal for now. If we find more fund raising needs we can build up the muscles needed for donor stewardship, but right now I think we can avoid it if we don't have any extra money floating around.

I figured it'd be good to hit the campaign. I personally don't mind having a little bit of money in some account, or cash, just in case we need it. Reduces the frenzy to raise for an event, less begging IMO. 

But if others want to do more with fund raising, I think we should get together and talk about it!

Fundraising to cover costs + a tiny slush fund is what I'm interested in, though I'd love to get together with other people and see what they think we could spend a little money on. 

[Chuck Vose]

For all donations, to stay in the good graces of donors, you have to track the money and also communicate how the donors exact money is going to a good thing.

The problem with slush funds is that it obscures and devalues the donations, we don't know if it's going to do something good, and even if it does eventually, we don't get that kick of happy when we see the "thanks" email.

But like I said, if those are muscles we want to build, I'm for it! And I'm available to work on it too.

[Sam Livingston-Gray]

Nice.  One nitpick:  the black tee should use a non-black color for the lettering.  ;)

[Jesse Cooke]

I tried, but it was going to make me design a whole new shirt. I wanted to do a red version too, with white letters, but again, whole new shirt. If there's demand I can whip that up.

[Rico Jones]

I actually think fundraising could be a very powerful way to increase buy-in and commitment from members of the community who care enough about PDX.rb to give money, but maybe don’t have the time to help out with the various aspects of organizing and running the group.

I have notices that there’s a funny thing that happens when you commit resources (time, money, etc.) to something, which is that you form a bond to that thing and feel a sense of responsibility to see it through. It’s like a mashup of the Ben Franklin Effect and the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

Of course, if we ask people for money, we have to have a good story about how it will not be misspent… :-)

[Chuck Vose]

Or how it was misspent in an amusing way. :)

[Jesse Cooke]

Yes, but you're talking about donations, I'm talking about the proceeds from selling something. Subtle but important distinction. ;)

Also, we could limit the slush fund. No reason the group needs all that much anyway.

[Jesse Cooke]

I whipped up a little fee log: http://pdxruby.org/meetup

[Shawna Scott]

There's also the possibility that we could be a bit fuzzy with our numbers for donors by saying, "here are the buckets we'd like to fill that your donations may support!" Then we can have a bit of slush for smaller stuff, and keep building towards a larger pot for something like (as Sam suggested) flying in an invited speaker.

[Rico Jones]

I guess a lot about how we proceed depends on whether we want to create a formal organization around perpetuating the group. I personally think that would be a good thing, and can see lots that could be achieved with a more formal organization (like Sam's idea in another thread about using funds to fly in top-tier speakers, or perhaps some of the diversity work that Emily Bookstein discussed in her talk at the meeting last night) but it would be a sizable amount of work and I'm not in a position to give much more time, so I'm reticent to advocate for somebody else to take on a bunch of work that I am not able to do myself.

However, I wanted to throw out a fundraising idea should a more formal PDX.rb organization become a thing: a paid job board. The ability to reach local talent is very valuable to companies and it seems quite reasonable to me to take advantage of this to raise funds that will help keep the Portland Ruby community nice and vibrant. The Ember community does this (http://jobs.emberjs.com/). They're charging $150 for a 45 day listing. If this is something that we want to do, we can probably ask Leah @ Tilde (she runs the Ember job board) for some pointers.

-Rico

[Jonan Scheffler]

This is the second best idea we've had around fundraising (after growing pot), we should definitely do it.

We could link to it from Calagator and bring it up at all the meetings. 1 ad every month would more than meet our needs. 

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[Rico Jones]

I was thinking that an ad on the Job board would also get them an announcement to the mailing list, the slack channel, and a prominent mention at the next monthly meeting.