On Nov 11, 2015 14:50, "Chris Keating" <chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> uuh - i am not sure if one should open that can of worms. what is the
>>> purpose of wikimania? is it to raise money? for sure not. there are
>>> more intelligent ways to do that. is wikimania a business, i.e. the
>>> organizer want to get as much money out of the conference as possible?
>>> for sure not. there are other conference topics which are more
>>> promising.
>>
>>
>> If there is interest by participants to chip in on scholarships for others to attend, I'm not sure providing an outlet for that interest means opening any cans, full of worms or other critters. It's an efficient matching of donor interest to funding needed.
>
>
> Quite! I can certainly see there being people (probably some Wikimedians) who would be interested in making a donation to help others (certainly Wikimedians) to get to Wikimania. Much more interested than they are in giving to WMF's general funds to pay for cups of coffee for developers. Of course, this might result in very few donations and not be worth the effort, but you don't know until you've tried it.
>
> By contrast I'd guess that very few banner-campaign donors are interested in Wikimania at all.

Lol, Sebastian, I do not dare imagine these critters :-) I was just imagining the number of persons using the registration page multiplied by the amount I would be prepared to donate, considering when the money flows in. Compared to the effort administering this.

Otoh my colleagues ask me every year how the money is spent and if they should pay. I would answer hosting+Internet , software development and make the volunteers meet, as knowing each other tends to create a much nicer atmosphere which leads to more contributions. Chris, every single person I met thought collecting for these items is a good idea. But I met a significant number of persons who did think collecting outside the banner is bad. The reasons were quite diverse, as were the various ways of money taken in those persons had in mind.

My first and second question would be: how much money you expect? Why not just ask to increase the budget for wikimania by this number writing one mail?

Best,
Rupert