Fund Raising Ideas

OSM needs funds to cover the cost of legal advice, hardware for the servers and promotion of the project.

We accept Donations, but we are also seeking creative and imaginative ideas for raising funds. If you have any suggestions please add them to this list or expand on anything that is already there.

• Merchandise ideas
  • Revamp the Shop and make it more prominent
  • "OSM-Explorer" car stickers
  • Posters (e.g. of node density for Europe)

• Donations. We've had a paypal donation button on the homepage since forever, but there ideas to take this further...
  • Making "Donation projects" like: "We need a new Database Server for 10.000 Euros", please donate now. And publish the donation progress ("Today (2006-08-02 10am we have already 2.325 Euros for the new database server". This idea has been implemented recently, with links to http://donate.openstreetmap.org
  • Publish on a wiki page what is needed in hardware, so that people can donate (or add a section to Servers page)
  • Include an opportunity to donate a tenner and become a Foundation member when people first register at OSM (currently about 10 per day).
• Advertising. Needs to be non-intrusive, but even then it may always be a bit damaging given that this a volunteer driven community project.
  • Google AdSense ads on this wiki, maybe other subdomains of openstreetmap.org. Easy to try out different banner types and locations, see what works without being too distracting.
  • Something more location intelligent. We already tried Mappam ads for a while
  • Sponsorship from GPS manufacturers (Garmin?)
  • Affiliate links from the Books page and GPS Reviews pages

• Local transport organisations to pay OSM to produce maps they need UK local transport suggestion

• Hire out GPS units (perhaps donated by GPS supplier)

• Sell OSM branded GPS trackers. A potential supplier could be [promotional fings] Daveemtb 11:30, 14 May 2009 (UTC) (I have no experience of the product or company. Merely the first result of a google search.)

• Looks like the igotu GT-100 which doesn't have great reviews on amazon, but there could be alternatives? Daveemtb 11:36, 14 May 2009 (UTC)