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On 10/22/2014 9:42 PM, Benjamin Kerensa wrote:<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAGOdq5kVqdc0Evf7iBFfmHiwm2eCedob4oV0dWFDfirNVFWfmg@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<p dir="ltr">I would have to say $500k seems quite ambitious.
Mozilla has only raised $800k last year in donations and $400k
in 2011.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Mozilla also spends a lot of money (hundreds of
thousands) to promote its donate campaigns.</p>
<p dir="ltr">If that funding were raised what would it pay for?</p>
</blockquote>
First, on the number. Clearly we'll know a lot more about that
number after we've tried it once. People have recommended to me
privately that you don't force this ambitious target, that is leave
the campaign open to much less so that you don't fail. I think that
is good advice. So we will give it our best shot, and take what we
get. We will not promise things that we can only deliver if we get
$500,000.<br>
<br>
But those numbers don't come out of thin air, either. A couple of
years ago I tracked a campaign in Firefox that was a subtle link,
and scaling that to Thunderbird I estimated $50,000 as a result. So
clearly a subtle donate link will not achieve $500,000.<br>
<br>
In a <a
href="http://mesquilla.com/2014/07/16/following-wikipedia-thunderbird-could-raise-1600000-in-annual-donations/">blog
post</a> I tried to scale a Wikipedia-style campaign to
Thunderbird usage, and came up with $1,600,000. Now that was a bit
tongue-in-cheek, but think about it. Do you remember the Wikipedia
fund raising? I certainly do. Do you remember the Firefox fund
raising? Barely. Wikipedia was willing to be a lot more visible than
Firefox was. Which was probably appropriate for both of them. So we
need to be more like Wikipedia, with a campaign that is clearly
asking the user to make a decision, without resorting to
interruptions in the workflow.<br>
<br>
As for the usage for the funds, there are the existing expenditures
on "user engagement" such as swag and meetups (such as the most
recent Summit) which need a few tens of thousands per year. But we
really hope to be able to hire a small staff to keep Thunderbird on
track, and that requires several hundreds of thousands per year.<br>
<br>
:rkent<br>
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