All right. Hello, everyone. It's very exciting to have these big packed rooms. I'm Amy Parker.
I'm the Chief Funding Officer at the Open SSL Software Foundation, which is a job I just
started in October. This is my first Phos Dam. It's all a little intimidating. I really
appreciate folks giving me a chance to speak with you all today.
I also want to say I know that a lot of people cringe at the idea of fundraising. I heard
it today in the very first presentation where the research showed that one of the things
maintainers don't want to be doing is fundraising. And I hear it with lots of people when I tell
them what I do is a career they just really are afraid of it. But that really has been what
I've done my whole career. More than 20 years now I've been working as a nonprofit fundraiser
and a wide variety of contexts from the New York Public Library to the Smithsonian Institution
and most recently the Wikimedia Foundation before joining Open SSL. And the reason I can
say that I myself really love my job is because I view it the way this quote views it.
I really see my job as inviting donors to invest in our organization so that we can accomplish
our mission and serve our users. A lot of people think fundraising is about begging people
for money because you need money. If you take that approach you will never find the joint
it. My hope is that I can inspire more of you in this room and the open source community
to feel a little bit more of the joyful part of this activity that we all have to do.
There are a lot of different ways to raise money and I just want to say only the largest
of organizations can do all the things you're seeing on the screen. Very few of us in this
room are going to be able to have fundraising programs that are this diverse and that
have this many methods of fundraising involved. First, smaller organizations, the best
return on investment, the best bang for your buck is really going to be focusing on these
major gifts. Major gifts might sound intimidating but it's really to scale. Maybe a
major gift for you is $1,000 or $1,000 or $1,000. Maybe it's 10 or 20. Whatever that threshold
is that this money starts making a little more of a difference. The reason that's the
important place to operate is because decades of data show that high touch fundraising has
this greater return on investment. You can see here that let's say we have this great email
list and I send out an email and I ask people for money. You will be lucky if one of them
out of $1,500 sends you $5. But if you actually take the time to get to know a potential
funder and build a relationship with them and have them really understand you and what your
needs are and what impact that gift is going to make. Your chances go wild. They turn
to like one in four. One of the presentations we saw earlier today, the person had made
15 asks and they had nine of them say yes. Those were not because they just sent an email
and hoped the money was going to come. Those were well-cultivated solicitations. I'm also
going to talk a lot about individuals today. I know we talk a whole lot about companies
and that there are very, very important part of fundraising in this community. But this
is data from the GivingUSA study which is one of the biggest long-term studies of philanthropies
going on for more than 20 years now that can buy all statistics about philanthropy in America.
Statistically, the vast majority of philanthropy is coming from individuals. They're obviously
the 67% but they're also this 8% of GivingBibyQuest and there are also actually a lot
of the foundations. Particularly in the U.S., a lot of wealthy people do set up family
foundations or channel their money through a donor advised fund which makes it appear in
this foundation line and kind of skews what that line means these days. This wasn't true
20, some years ago when the study started. Corporate GivingWild important is on the whole
of very smallest percentage. It's also the smallest when you think about it in terms of proportion.
So, as an individual, individuals give more as a share of their income around 2% of their
income they're donating than companies which is like 1% or less. Before we can think about fundraising
for our own organizations, I just want to take a minute to put us all in the same mental space
and try to think about this from an emotional level. I also heard that in one of the presentations
today about the emotional significance. Think about a meaningful gift that you have made.
To any charity, maybe it's your church or your hospital or your kid's school or the food bank
down the street, whatever it is, something that you've made and try to think about why did you do that?
No, we don't have to give gifts. Why did you do it and how did it make you feel?
If we have lots of time, it would actually be nice to hear some of your examples but since we don't,
I will give you my example. This picture was taken in 1997 when I went to hospital Albert Schwitzer
in Daeshapel, Haiti and I had this amazing service learning experience. As an American, you can
probably tell, let my accent. It was the first time I'd left the country and where did I go to like
one of the poorest places on the planet? It made such a big impact on me and I still continue to
make small donations to this place every year. I also know they have very few resources.
Every dollar I give is going to make a difference. That's why I am doing it.
But I'm also doing it because they ask me. Frankly, I like them but if they didn't remind me
from time to time, I would probably forget. We all have busy lives, a lot of things on our minds,
and the fact that I get these solicitation letters every once in a while helps remind me
to do this thing that I want to do. I hope like your examples, the way you feel when you make a
gift is actually good. It's not a load of something that makes you feel bad but generally speaking,
you care about a thing and you give money to it. This quote is from a keeping excellence in fundraising,
which is actually the textbook that professional fundraisers all read. I have this certification.
It's a certified fundraising executive credential and there's lots of things you have to do to get
this but you do have to pass a test and this is the book that if you read it, you will be able to pass
the test. It really teaches you about fundraising but it also tries to put you in this mindset of
seeing your job as a job that is helping people make an impact they could not do otherwise. I can't
make anybody healthy and Haiti on my own. I'm giving so that I can allow somebody else to do
that thing that I hope happens. This is also a line with what the studies show. I know a lot
of the status from the U.S. there's a lot of data on philanthropy in the U.S., which is why much
of it's coming from there. But the studies show that when you ask people why they're giving gifts,
the number one reason is the mission. It just falls in a way they believe in what you're doing
and why you're doing it. But not far behind is the happiness. Not far behind that is the fact that
makes people feel good. They want to do this thing because of the joy they will experience and
to my point earlier because they get asked. You can't just hope that people are going to realize
your software is important and oh I'm just going to send some money. There are some wonderful
humans that do that but they are few and far between. Companies have very different motivations
for making gifts. There were presentations earlier today that talked about some of those and
I'm not trying to pretend that these are untrue. I just want to spend time on it but I want to
acknowledge that companies exist to make profit. It's like a fact. It's not an evil. It is simply
a fact. But when I think about corporate giving, I try to remember that it's also human beings.
There is a business decision but the beginning of the relationship is me, Amy Parker speaking to you
and we are building a relationship and you are getting excited and that might lead to other
conversations with the company that will ultimately be based upon these facts.
And this gets me to the real point of today's session, the session title.
There's this saying and fundraising that's successive is about making the right
ask to the right person at the right time and so for the rest of this presentation I'm just going
to kind of go through those three. The right ask. How many of you in this room own a drill?
I really think everybody at a certain age you just own a drill. Do you remember buying this drill
and why you bought it? Was it because it was your lifelong dream to own the drill? Does it have
pride of place in your house? No, probably not. It was probably a super practical decision
that you needed to hang a painting on the wall or maybe build something if you're really crafty.
The reason I mention this is that we can get really cut up and talking about what we do
the drill instead of focusing on why the drill is around. Why did we get the drill? What does
the drill do? You know that drill is essential to habitat for humanity building houses for people
that the charitable purpose of those houses is where the passion and connection is going to be
not like this black and decker drill. That's really uninteresting. We can especially in this
community when so many people that have to do the fundraising are also the experts in the technology
you can kind of get trapped and talking about the drill stuff. The tools without talking about
the bigger vision. Those of you who have come here to this conference maybe not, but in general
it can be a trap within open source software. As I mentioned I joined the Open SSL software
foundation in October. While I had been at Wicked Media which is an open source project,
much of their funding comes from people who don't even realize it's an open source project.
So this was a big shift for me to move over to a project like this that is
important and deeply critical to the world, but it's really not known. It doesn't have that
neighbor brand recognition. Frankly, I was an English major so if you read what we do on the left
I still barely understand it. It's complicated. My boss is sitting here. He gave me like a week
long PowerPoint slides trying to explain open SSL. It's highly technical. It's something that is
not something the general public is going to read on the left and say oh yeah that's important.
The mission is universally understandable and is inspiring in a very different way. The mission
is really the magic of it all. The photography might be what we do, but the mission, the why we do
it is really the thing that we want to leverage when we're trying to get people to buy into our
beliefs and to join us as supporters. So one of the best parts about starting a new job as a fundraiser
is meeting the people that already give you money because they already love you. It's an easy place
to start. And so one of the first things I did was look back on GitHub sponsors. Who were these people
that were not even asked, no, I didn't exist. There was no Amy Parker they are asking people
for money and they just sent us money. $5 a hundred dollars doesn't matter how much they took their
own initiative and just sent money. And I've been writing to them and talking to them and asking them
why? Why did you do this? And these are just some samplings of the reasons. These are not about
the technical side at all, right? These are people who have mission alignment interested in our
values, same worldview, want to see the same things happen. That is really where the storytelling
comes into play. This is just another example you may or may not have heard of this place called
Story Corps, it's a US nonprofit. And what they do is put two sort of regular people in a room
and you have a conversation with each other and those conversations get recorded and they are
archived at the Library of Congress and they are also played on like national public radio
and they're just everyday normal conversations. In a way, that doesn't sound like a super important
thing. It's nice, but it doesn't sound like a thing that is going to really inspire me and
get me to make it. But when you read this solicitation letter and the way they're connecting
this storytelling to this bigger picture of humanity understanding one another, especially today
is very divisive times. It takes it to a higher level. The mission of story corps actually reads
to help us believe in each other by illuminating the humanity and possibility in all of us one
story at a time. And it's that more so than we record conversations between average people
that is really where the magic is. This just sort of sums up what I was saying about storytelling.
You want to put your mission at the center. If you don't have one, you want to work on
articulating what your mission is. And donors give because they want to accomplish something,
they can't, they can't just do on their own. They know that you are the one making
a possible. You're that drill and they want to give to let you do your work.
I'm going to move on to the right person. The right person is really all about networking.
So this is the then diagram of the things that need to fall in place for you to find the right person.
And you know, as a fundraiser, lots of people come to me with brilliant ideas like
you thought about Bill Gates or Elon Musk or all the richest people in the world. That's
going to be the solution to all of your fundraising problems. The piece of this pie that often
gets overlooked really is the connection. So capacity just means this person can give you money.
Authinity is there, there are connection to an alignment with your mission.
The connection means you have to be able to get to them. This was also in an earlier presentation today.
You know, this is the challenge most of us have. There could be funders out there that seem very
well aligned, but if you don't have a way in the talk to them, that's going to be your challenge.
This is from that same textbook, these concentric, concentric circles. Yes.
We could argue about who's in the middle of your concentric circles. That is an arguable
point and not why I put it up here, but the point is that the people at the center, those are
the ones spending the most time with you. They are the ones that know you the best. They have the
most skin in the game, so to speak. They have the most stake in it. And as you move out, it just
lessons and lessons and lessons. You will have way more success raising money for people in the
center. Those people that are already educated and understand and committed are much more likely
to give support than someone way out in the general public who you're just talking to for the first
time, who doesn't even know what open source is. The part of fundraising where we're talking about
networking is building up your central center circle, but also trying to move more people into it.
People in these outer rings that can be brought just slightly closer in so that they are more
likely to respond positively to your ask for support. In an open source project, who's closest
to you? Probably people volunteering in one way or another, and I know this is super sensitive.
I want to assure you this is super sensitive in all nonprofit organizations, not just the open source
community, but the data from a variety of studies. This is just one of many shows that people who are
giving of their time to something are very likely to also give of their financial support.
The way you approach those people has to be done really delicately in with sensitivity,
but those people are bought in. And globally, this is a global study on philanthropy here.
More people give money than time. Time is actually a far more precious resource to people,
especially if you worked all day on a computer doing a really technical job, and then it's like
night time, and you really want to just keep coding on your free project, nobody's paying you for.
You know, the time that you're getting is a miracle. The money actually more people are going to do that.
And so just a little summary of the networking, I think these subbolets here, you need to know
your existing community first, and you know, being new at my organization, this is really what I'm
trying to do as I talk to people, you know, what motivates people? Who are these people? Why are
they giving us support? Trying to understand that before you go out to other people is really
important, and you may be surprised. I was surprised that some of these people that I wrote to,
they were like, yeah, I don't even, you know, I don't personally use open SSL, but like,
I know that we do somewhere, but I understand it's important. So I did not expect that answer
it was really shocking. So asking people and getting those answers as key before you can go and
build relationships out. Also, a lot of funderators' offices look like those
scary serial killer movies with post-it notes and strings because we do a lot of network mapping.
You know, you know, this person, but who do they know? They might have a connection to another
organization or another funder. And so once you know your core people, it's not just really about
them, but who they can connect you to and building that out as far as you can. And, you know,
it's not only software that needs documentation. We are not geniuses that are going to remember
all of this. It is really good to take advantage of whatever resources that you're to
spell is able to track all of this information, whether you're using CRM, a constituent relationship
management system, or whether you're just using an Excel spreadsheet, or whatever free and open
source version of Excel there is. That documentation is essential. And it's also essential
because of the reality of turnover. You know, people aren't here forever. And then finally,
the right time. Am I at time? Am I okay? Okay. I'm at time. Okay. I will just say the right time.
This version of the slide is talking about how really we can think about our right time, but it's
the right time for the donor that's the most important. You want to have some kind of net to
catch people that's the right time for them, like it gets upsponsors site. And I can only be here today
because we do have some sponsors giving us support. So thank you to them. And if any of you are
in the room, let me know. There will be no time for questions because I apparently talked a lot,
but I have a bunch of business cards and you can find me on LinkedIn if you want to chat.
There actually still is time. Oh, it's time for questions. Oh, great. Oh, yes. Okay. Sorry. Confusion.
It's okay. I just spent for the end, but I will take questions instead.
Yes. I will repeat your question as well.
Yeah. The question was, do I have any advice specifically for the European context with
a culture of charities different? And I would kind of be lying if I said yes. I have had the
opportunity to live abroad in Asia, which also has a different philanthropic context, but I've never
lived in Europe myself. All the Smithsonian and the Wikimedia Foundation do have global
donors. So I have some experience with those donors, but if you are European based,
somebody will have a better answer for you than me. Yes.
Where is the largest? It takes the start putting up a donor base, for example, or the
two. In carry people know what business, but I imagine they're a lot more business aspect
that you need to think about. Can you share a bit more about that?
The question is, where is the best place to start for putting up a donor page?
Okay. Well, this is a question that gets into some complexity. So I will talk a little bit
about OpenSSL because that's an easy place for me to start. So the one place that we have set
up right now is GitHub sponsors. It's an easy setup to be able to allow people to give on that
platform and most of the people who know us and know what we are are there. So it's a good audience
and an easy starting place. And then we get like a monthly disbursement of the gifts that come in.
They serve as sort of this middleman so that we aren't doing the administrative work around receiving,
thanking, acknowledging every single donation. And that, those approaches, they're not the only
one, but the ones that serve as the middle are really good place to start if you're not doing this yet.
When somebody gives you money, you know, acknowledging that it's just arrived and saying thank you
is really, really important or you will not get more. And so if you don't have the time to
in space to do that, you want to use an organization or something that will facilitate that.
Beyond that, it really depends on the legal status of your organization. And this is also
dependent on if you're a European or US based. But in the US, if you're a 501C3 charity, there are
many platforms that are free, that you can, well, free as in no fee to use to allow people to give
you donations. PayPal charities is one of the most common ones and they take a service fee,
but they facilitate the transactions for you. There are many options once you go beyond that,
but for baby steps, that's where I would begin. Yes. What are your opinions about the differences
between a pure donation, a sponsorship versus something like a Kickstarter, where you can also
get a donation, again, but also get something back in the future or something. Yeah. The question was
about my opinion about places where you make sort of a pure donation versus things like Kickstarter
where you're getting something in return, like, you know, a T-shirt or other sorts of tiered
benefits. I've done both of my life, both have their own advantages, and there are certain
times in places where something like a Kickstarter can make a lot of sense, but those went
done well are a ton of work. And when I was at the Smithsonian, the Asian Art Museum one year
did like a Kickstarter, and it was enormously successful, but they ended up having to hire an
additional staff person because of the work involved, the expectations that people have for what
they're getting in return are just very high. And I also think it's a little bit of thinking about
the mental, the way you want people to mentally think about these gifts. So, you know, if I give
you something and I get something back, there's a little bit of a transaction, like, oh, that was
a cool sticker, or, you know, it's not the same calculation. And donors that are doing that
on a transactional basis are less likely to stick around and be devoted and want to give to you
year after year. So, they can be great for, like, a one-time, while, when we're doing this explosion
of fun, and we wanted you branding and marketing and T-shirts, but if you want people to get into a
pattern and have that long-term giving, it's much better to think about pure philanthropy. People
would disagree from the, I will say, that's an opinion. I think a couple more? Three more minutes,
in the green. Do you speak about the process of bullying people from the outer circles, what's
the inner ones? What is it, look like? Hmm. Well, it's going to be different everywhere and
sort of depend upon, sorry, the question was, for bringing people from outer circles into your
inner circles, what does that process look like? And so, I think one of the other things that we've
just done at OpenSSL is hire our first community manager. He's back there, I'm staring at him. And
that's one step in trying to bring people closer, because there are people out there now that are,
like, one ring out, but nobody's ever really engaged them. And like, why are you doing this?
What did you just do? And so, that's one version of trying to bring those people in, you know,
just paying attention and inviting conversations is one way. And the other way is through that
networking. So, you know, if I'm in the center and I host a little luncheon and invite three
of my friends who are in the next circle out, you know, and you come to lunch and now you've met
three new people to bring in. That kind of cultivation event is what it would be called in a
technical sense. Can be done in a small scale, like, four of us just go to lunch after this,
or in a much bigger scale, you know, some charities have very, very big events that do that.
Last question. Last question. Yes.
Yeah. Well, I think people are smarter than the question was, how do you strike the balance between,
having people, if you really enjoy chatting with people about your work, how do you strike the
balance between, we're just having a chat, and I just need the money. And honestly, like,
they know you need the money. Like, it's not, you're not tricking anyone. They're not going to
feel deceived when you bring this topic up. And as a fundraiser, I've always had a job title that
indicated that that is my job. You know, I'm not taking you to lunch because I want you to be my
new best friend and be my cats that are whatever. Really, there is an ultimate aim. It can also
be challenging if you like people that some people will just want to talk and talk and talk and
it's hard. If it's going nowhere, that's a challenge you'll figure out in time as you do it more.
But I think the transparency in your communication, even requesting the meeting, you know, one of the,
one of the things I would like to talk with you today about his funding.
Yeah. All right. Thank you.