[Bundle-sponsorship-wg] International PyCon Prospectus

[Nick Coghlan]

On 12 March 2016 at 23:24, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at python.org> wrote:
> On 12.03.2016 08:55, Nick Coghlan wrote:
>> As far as covering costs goes, I think an important aspect of that
>> will be to be clear that bundling carries an expectation of reduced
>> customisation of benefits, at least at the PSF level - hence the fee
>> discounts.
>
> I'm not sure which fee discounts you are referring to here.

I mean the proposal for distinct a la carte/regional/global rates for
the administration overhead - my working assumption from the start has
always been that conferences get their normal sponsorship amounts, and
we'd figure out some other way to cover the PSF's costs (whether that
was cross-subsidisation from PyCon US, covering it out of general
sponsorships, or applying an additional percentage to the bundles to
cover costs).

The reason I specifically like the "15/7.5/3" administration charge
structure is that:

* a self-sustaining program is preferable, since that provides more
scope for future hiring & grant making
* 50% and 80% are substantial enough discounts for potential sponsors
to appreciate them
* 20/10/4 feels too high, 10/5/2 feels too low, so 15/7.5/3 splits the
difference
* I except many of the PSF's costs in staff time to be incurred per
sponsor, rather than per event (registering with their supplier
management if they're not already PSF or PyCon sponsors, getting to
know the right points of contact within their event management
organisation, getting to know what they're generally interested in as
sponsor benefits, etc)
* for sponsors that opt for a bundle over a la carte, I'd still expect
their typical engagement with the smaller regional events to be low
(since they often won't have an on-site presence there - unless they
were planning to be involved in the event anyway, the cost in staff
time and travel would likely exceed the sponsorship)

Consider the global Platinum sponsorship, for example - the admin fee
discount there ends up being just over $9000. Compared to a more
selective a la carte sponsorship, that's likely going to mean a
Platinum sponsorship for each of the 3 or 4 lowest cost conferences
participating in the prospectus - those are often also going to be the
ones where the return on investment for large sponsors is smallest,
but the potential return on investment for the PSF in terms of growing
the Python community is highest (it's much easier for a 150 person
conference to grow to 300 people than it is for a 750 person
conference to grow to 1500).

Along those lines, I've posted a couple of comments in the document
suggesting a change in the way the administration charges for the
bundles are presented.

Currently, the discounts are baked into the percentage used to
calculate the the administration charge line item. I believe it would
be preferable to always list the administration charge at the a la
carte rate, and then explicitly list the fee discount as a separate
line. Using the global Platinum sponsorship as an example again,
that's currently presented as:

Funds distributed to conferences: 76590
Program administration charge (3%): 2298
Cost to sponsoring organisation: 78888

I'd suggest instead presenting it as:

Funds distributed to conferences: 76590
Program administration charge (15%): 11488
Administration charge discount (80%): -9191
Cost to sponsoring organisation: 78887

(In that particular case, the rounding works out slightly differently,
but that's at most a dollar either way)

Regards,
Nick.

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