Improve visibility of Members
Problem
We have two ways organizations can financially support the Tor Project: as a sponsor or a member.
The difference between sponsors and members has not been clear to organizations who want to support Tor. Those who do support Tor have noted that they don't see their organization listed on our site (even when they are there) because they are confused between whether their organization is a sponsor or a member. This was been a point of refusal to renew for one member.
"Membership" has also caused a few issues on the accounting level, specifically about membership time frames--we've used this term with flexibility, including flexible time frames for renewal, but a membership in an accounting term needs to be more formal with specific timeframes.
This problem brings up some questions:
- How do we better recognize our Members and make it easier to find out that they support Tor?
- Can we combine the Sponsors and Membership page?
- If so, how do we delineate between Sponsors and Members?
- Do we need to delineate between Sponsors and Members? What do we gain or lose in either direction?
Below, I am proposing a change in the way we publicly recognize organizations and companies that support the Tor Project.
Proposal
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We should diminish the public differentiation between 'sponsors' and 'members' by using the word "supporters," a term that encompasses all organizations that make donations to the Tor Project. (Sponsors and sponsor numbers will remain an internal mechanism for distinguishing discrete funded projects. This external change does not change our internal accounting and project management practices.)
-
We should combine the
/about/sponsors
and/about/membership
pages into one page,about/supporters
. -
We should continue to use annual support renewal, and 'onion levels' as mechanisms of engaging corporate donors, including retaining these levels in a
about/supporters
page.
Benefits of merging "sponsors" and "membership" into "supporters"
-
Reduces confusion for corporate, foundation, and institutional donors about "what they are"
-
We're able to continue to utilize mechanisms that have been working in the membership program: engaging corporations, giving them visibility and benefits, offering clear levels of support, and asking for them to renew their gifts annually.
-
Current groups that are listed on the /membership page gain more visibility.
-
Opens the door for "membership" terminology to be used with individual donors in the future if we decide to.
Suggested page changes
When combining /about/sponsors
and /about/membership
, my vision is that we use visual size to differentiate the different membership levels, similar to how /about/membership
does so now.
Below is my extremely rudimentary idea.