[Bundle-sponsorship-wg] International PyCon Prospectus

[Nick Coghlan]

On 12 April 2016 at 12:09, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12 April 2016 at 06:20, Betsy Waliszewski <betsy at python.org> wrote:
>> Hi team,
>>
>> After discussing this with Ewa, we're going to put this project on hold
>> until after PyCon. I've requested an invoice to pay for the design services
>> so far. We can revisit adding clarity to the proposal after the conference
>> is over and I have time to dedicate to this important project.
>
> I agree that makes sense from a staff focus perspective, but would it
> still be acceptable for us to pitch the prospectus directly in its
> current form? I'm currently trying to explain to Red Hat's Open Source
> & Standards team the differences between working with a public
> interest charity and trade associations run in the interests of
> sponsor members, as well as asking if a fee waiver for a year or two
> would impact their current attitude of "We don't want to pay a modest
> admin fee to help a public interest charity run a self-supporting
> regional conference funding program".

Sorry, scratch that snarkiness (it was me being mean to folks working
within the constraints of operating budgets set at much higher
levels).

At this point, I'll personally put this question on hold as well, and
revisit it after design iterations start up again on the PSF side of
things.

One thing I did look up was metrics on what's considered a reasonable
processing-cost-per-invoice for corporate Finance departments, and
that seems to be around the USD$5-12 mark, at least in the US:
http://ww2.cfo.com/expense-management/2015/06/metric-month-accounts-payable-process-cost/

Since we're currently proposing an admin fee of 10-20x that even for
the 3% "All the PyCons" level (and 50-100x for the a la carte level),
we're likely going to need to adjust the way we cover those costs
(e.g. making it a fixed charge per conference per sponsor, rather than
scaling with the amount they distribute to participating conferences).

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia