Open Bug 1018951 Opened 10 years ago Updated 10 years ago

Project-specific donation page/form no longer available?

Categories

(Websites :: donate.mozilla.org, defect)

Product:
Websites
Component:
donate.mozilla.org
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: mcsmurf, Unassigned)

References

Details

We've noticed that the SeaMonkey-specific donation page at https://donate.mozilla.org/page/contribute/seamonkey now redirects to https://sendto.mozilla.org/page/contribute/EOYFR2013-newdefault (actually it probably did for a while already). With the old form you could donate to SeaMonkey project directly (the money went to some "virtual" bank account managed by Mozilla Foundation). Did SeaMonkey project miss a memo about that direct donations to a project are no longer possible?
> We've noticed that the SeaMonkey-specific donation page at > https://donate.mozilla.org/page/contribute/seamonkey now redirects to > https://sendto.mozilla.org/page/contribute/EOYFR2013-newdefault (actually it > probably did for a while already). With the old form you could donate to > SeaMonkey project directly (the money went to some "virtual" bank account > managed by Mozilla Foundation). Did SeaMonkey project miss a memo about that > direct donations to a project are no longer possible? CC some people at random
Flags: needinfo?(kohei.yoshino)
Flags: needinfo?(gerv)
Flags: needinfo?(bobby)
Flags: needinfo?(andrea)
The reason for the change dates back a few months. We use Kount for our payment fraud detection, and bugs in older forms were causing incredible amounts of frauds to go unchallenged. This had led to a threat to our continued use of Paypal for the accounts, and we pulled the ejection handle and moved all to a single form. Was there a totally separate account the Sea Monkey stuff donated to? Bobby may be able to recall better than I. In any case, we can likely have (someone?) redo that existing default page and direct it to whichever place it needs to go relatively easily.
per IRC chat: [15:50:44] <laura> person is jp, mofo devops. I just pinged him. this is what he said. note: we don’t run that website [15:51:05] <laura> jp: it is BSD, but of anyone, i suppose im as close to a vendor contact as we have [15:51:17] <laura> jp: ah, i believe i even know why [15:51:28] <laura> jp: we had a bug causing donations to not flow through our fraud detection, and wiped all old pages [15:51:42] <laura> jp: i'll file this with folks who work on those forms [15:51:42] <laura> jp: thanks for the heads up! :jp, can you morph this to be said "file with..." and/or link this bug up so we can all be in the loop?
Flags: needinfo?(kohei.yoshino)
Flags: needinfo?(johns)
Flags: needinfo?(gerv)
Flags: needinfo?(bobby)
Flags: needinfo?(andrea)
(In reply to JP Schneider :jp from comment #2) > Was there a totally separate account the Sea Monkey stuff donated to? Bobby > may be able to recall better than I. Mitchell, or KaiRo may also know (or have somewhere) the answer to this, since it was so long ago.
As a note, I only know there was some kind of "bucket" dedicated for SeaMonkey, not sure if that was a different account or not. I probably know just as much as Callek here (but back in the old days, I was the SeaMonkey contact for all this).
+Geoffrey in case he can provide some insight for how this was setup.
Hi All. This is a purposeful change to make things easier and to raise more money for community projects and Mozilla both. The old approach was not an effective fundraising strategy and created *huge* amounts of administrative and accounting cost that outweighed the revenue we were collecting. The new approach is a partnership with Indiegogo to have a Mozilla-curated page for community projects. We are in the final stages of getting that partnership through security and legal review. Once that's done, we'll be able to provide community projects with (i) an Indiegogo campaign page, (ii) direct support from our fundraising staff on how to shape, create, and promote fundraising asks, and (iii) better, faster, and more efficient payments. Happy to chat more.
Flags: needinfo?(johns)
(In reply to Geoffrey MacDougall from comment #7) > Once that's done, we'll be able to provide community projects with (i) an > Indiegogo campaign page, (ii) direct support from our fundraising staff on > how to shape, create, and promote fundraising asks, and (iii) better, > faster, and more efficient payments. W00t. Excellent News!
(In reply to Philip Chee from comment #8) > W00t. Excellent News! We have Chris Arnold to thank for setting up the Indiegogo partnership.
Thank you Geoffrey, viva la mission!
(In reply to Geoffrey MacDougall from comment #7) > The new approach is a partnership with Indiegogo to have a Mozilla-curated > page for community projects. We are in the final stages of getting that > partnership through security and legal review. Is there a bug tracking that progress or some other method of tracking it?
Hi Ian, This is being set up for us by Indiegogo for the MoFo team at present. Mozilla team just provided a privacy, security and legal signoff. The page should be set up shortly and I can add indiegogo's page to this bug. Regards, Christopher
The Mozilla-affiliated campaign page is now live: https://www.indiegogo.com/partners/mozilla
(In reply to Christopher Arnold from comment #14) > The Mozilla-affiliated campaign page is now live: > https://www.indiegogo.com/partners/mozilla Is it possible to have an open-ended campaign as we need something to replace the previous donation page?
(In reply to Ian Neal from comment #15) > Is it possible to have an open-ended campaign as we need something to > replace the previous donation page? Ian: Can I ask how much the open ended (aka Evergreen in fundraising terms) campaign was bringing in? Reason I ask is that focused, acive, time-bound campaigns generally bring in significantly more revenue than passive, constant donation forms.
Hey, To reiterate, this was originally a permanent page, at a single URL, and not a time-directed donation page. The donations given through this page were "earmarked" for SeaMonkey use. For uses such as rewarding contributors who do major work, paying for art assets if needed (since our core team is not artists), or paying for a team-week meetup for all the volunteers who work on it. While I agree specific donation campaigns *can* bring in more money in a short time burst, the long standing donation page has brought in a relatively steady (albeit small compared to Firefox) amount of donations, aiui. I would appreciate such a page that our website can directly link to, for those users who decide to learn more, realize we're a volunteer community, and choose to donate. A donation is sometimes the only way people can actually assist a project like SeaMonkey when they care about it, due to lacking either time or skills.
Flags: needinfo?(johns)
Hi All, It cost the Foundation more in accounting and administrative overhead to maintain these small, restricted-dollar accounts than was in them. I understand that was an invisible cost to most of you, but it made the old system unsustainable. The support through the Indiegogo pages has two advantages. The first is that it will raise you more money. The second is that the funds go straight to you, without needing to sit in the Foundation's books. Effective fundraising is done through time-bound campaigns. I'd ask that those who are interested reach out to try this approach. We've got lots of training, support, and PR lined up to help. Thanks, G.
Geoffrey, My concerns here are multi-level; 1) the page went away without telling/informing us 2) the prior ability for SeaMonkey to ask for money toward any initiative we had was restricted to whatever came in through our original donation page. 3) We were informed (earlier in this bug) that the page going away was intended, but was coming back. That seems to be not the case. ---- I'm ignoring my concern with #1 because it can't be easily rectified in a constructive way, without simply asking "please inform people in the future when stuff like this goes away" #2 I'd like to have an answer on, IFF SeaMonkey can request and receive funds from MoFo for things we want to do, then this current solution is fine. IF we can't, then its effectively cutting another rope in MoFo's commitment to support us "as we were". #3 is why I needinfo'd johns. I can sympathize with the points in c#18, but I should also say that we can't easily have the money go to any individual due to personal customs/tax requirements of varying countries. Some times we have chosen to use money as well to order shirts/swag for community, etc. All of this should not be gated on an individual having received money over the last year or two, especially with no guarantee said individual will be involved in the project after the year is done. As I said, we are a *fully* volunteer team, while there is a leadership structure, there is no legal entity/bank/etc to receive funds other than MoFo at this time. Therefore we can't even hold a time based event with beneficiary {one-of-us} for most things. I don't mind if the bank account is technically MoFo, as long as "SeaMonkey can use {x} of the money in a 501(c)(3) compatible use case" however you want to track {x}. If that {x}. I also don't want to feel like I'm ever asking for more of MoFo's money than we would have brought in. That if I then go to {someone} "I want to hold another SeaMonkey face to face meetup, what is our current budget to do so", I'm not going in with "well it will cost 10k USD with travel and accomodations" and get denied, vs. "You have 2k USD that you can use, because that's how much was donated" and then look to see if/how we can do it (e.g. everyone pays own travel. whatever) Whom must we rope in to try to bring this to a mutually beneficial end point?
Hi Justin, Tracking tied donations was the issue; that was the cost center. Happy to continue the conversation by voice. I can be reached at my bugmail address to set up a time. Thanks! G.
So small donations are only allowed to go to Firefox?
Clearing info since this is a biz issue rather than technical.
Flags: needinfo?(johns)
Is this WFM now that bug 1081726 is fixed? (assuming that it works as intended...)
I'll note that now 7 months later https://www.indiegogo.com/partners/mozilla currently states $5,573USD raised across all campaigns 2 Campaigns ... so that obviously did not turn out very well.
hi Magnus, definitely too early to say Indiegogo "did not turn out very well". There have been 2 campaigns and a lot of learning curve, and we've been under-resourced to help give it a real go. "If you build it, they will come" does not work in this case, it takes support, systems, training; etc. for a community to put this kind of crowd-funding model to work.
You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.