2011 Summit Fundraising Toolkit

We encourage you to translate these templates and text and adapt them to be relevant to your own audience. If you have questions or need further support in your efforts, please contact allison[at]creativecommons.org

Who should I ask?

• Colleagues
• Friends
• Family
• Companies who find importance in your work and/or the work of Creative Commons, or companies who have supported your projects before.
• Local charitable organizations who provide funding for conferences or international initiatives.
• Important: If you plan to approach any foundations or companies, please let us know so we can coordinate efforts and minimize multiple requests coming from different people.

How should I ask them?

A personalized email, phone call, or in-person meeting all work well. You can also make an appeal for support by tweeting or posting on Facebook, LinkedIn, or other sites, with a link to the CC donate page: https://creativecommons.net/donate.

The most important thing is that you are upfront with where their support will go, why it is important to Creative Commons, and equally importantly, why it is important to you. Feel free to use the following email template and adapt or alter to make it more relevant for you.

Dear Name/Friend,

As much as all of us enjoy and depend on online teamwork these days, there is no substitute for the power of face-to-face collaboration. I am writing to ask you to support the 2011 Creative Commons Global Summit.

For almost ten years, Creative Commons (CC) has been the leader in providing tools and licensing options to innovators all over the world, thereby fostering a more productive and collaborative world. CC provides a free, public, and standardized infrastructure that creates a balance between the reality of the Internet and the reality of copyright laws. If you haven’t sought a CC license yourself, I guarantee you have benefited from one. Flickr, YouTube, Wikipedia and the White House all rely on CC licenses in order to make content, images, and videos freely available. Since 2002, more than 400 million licenses have been acquired through Creative Commons.

Like most global communities, the Creative Commons team, made up of volunteer experts and industry leaders and a small paid staff, communicates mostly online. They work hard to develop new open licensing initiatives and related materials to make these licenses simple and more functional for people all over the world. Through years of working together as a team, the CC community has learned that no amount of online teamwork can replace the value of in-person collaboration. Face to face meetings facilitate easy sharing of cross-cultural application of lessons learned. This is especially true for countries with strong language or cultural ties but geographic challenges, such as Latin America and Spain, Canada and France, and Macau and Portugal. Past face-to-face meetings in our extended community have resulted in outcomes like the Public Domain Manifesto and the Cape Town declaration on Open Education.

This year, the Creative Commons Global Summit will take place in September in Warsaw, Poland. The goal of the Summit is to plan new open licensing initiatives and refine CC’s strategic vision in response to exponential demand for, and growth of, open licensing policies and practices around the globe. As “open” becomes the default for governments, educators, scientists, artists and many others, CC is committed to making license choices more prevalent and user-friendly.

Please support the CC Global Summit with a gift of $50 or more. Please do what you can to support this important gathering of technical and legal experts: https://creativecommons.net/donate.

I hope you consider supporting this exciting Summit. In appreciation of your donation, I will send you regular updates from the Summit and a report on issues covered and policies developed.

I look forward to hearing from you. Please click here to make your donation: https://creativecommons.net/donate.

Best,

Donation/wire information

Donations to the summit can be made in the following ways:

1. Make an online donation using credit card, Google Checkout account, or PayPal account on the donate page.
2. Send a check, payable to Creative Commons, to:

Creative Commons
444 Castro St. Suite 900
Mountain View, CA 94041
USA

3. Send a wire transfer (recommended for donations USD500 or greater). For wire information, please contact allison[at]creativecommons.org

Other ways to support the Global Summit

• Online store - CC T-shirts, stickers, buttons, and lapel pins. The revenue from these items between now and September will go to support the Summit.

Global Summit info

Creative Commons 10 Years and Counting: Supporting an Open Future
Creative Commons Global Summit 2011 – Warsaw, Poland

Creative Commons (CC) leaders and expert affiliates from around the world will convene with key stakeholders for three days in September 2011. Together we will plan new open licensing initiatives and refine our strategic vision in response to exponential demand for open licensing policies and practices around the globe.

Significantly, 2011 also marks CC’s ten-year anniversary. In that time we have gone from an idea to a global leader in sharing culture, with over 500 million works worldwide now available under a CC license. This makes 2011 a crucial time for CC, as we consider the key challenges and goals for our next ten years.

As Creative Commons and open culture continue to gain popularity, it is crucial that we keep a strong focus on community. Beyond the legal innovation for which Creative Commons is known, the people and organizations that use and benefit from our licences are the key to the success of “open”. It is therefore crucial that we continue to support the sharing community and provide the resources they need to grow and evolve. This includes opportunities for them to interact with and learn from leaders in the field and each other.

OPEN Challenges

Open is becoming the default for governments, educators, scientists, artists and many others. For the benefit of all who use and contribute to our shared commons, we must address persistent challenges including:

License interoperability and compatibility issues that impede sharing and remixing of information, data and other content, compromising the overall growth and future of the collective commons;

The stability of the increasingly important, but complex and difficult to protect public domain;

Educating those charged with implementing a mandate of “openness,” and supporting those responding to openness requirements. From foundation grant recipients to governments seeking to maximize reuse and utility of the materials they fund, education is critical for ensuring correct implementation that interoperability and the ability of the Commons to scale;

Supporting and continuing to grow the Creative Commons community around the world. A strong and effective international community is essential to ensure that “open” remains a global phenomenon, accessible and responsive to those who most need it no matter their location or circumstances. Connecting CC’s international affiliates and enabling them to connect with other advocates of open ideals is a key part of this.

Critical Topics

Together with our affiliate experts and other stakeholders and stewards of the commons, CC will use the Global Summit to celebrate our collective successes and proactively address these significant challenges facing the commons. Key topics to be discussed include:

Supporting the growth of Open Educational Resources (OER);

Government adoption and public sector information;

Launching the CC 4.0 versioning process—including conversation with key adopters and other license stewards; and

Increasing the capacity for Affiliate Teams to secure their own funding for work in their communities.

Why Warsaw

Poland will be hosting the EU Presidency for the second half of 2011 - at a time when the EU is intensifying work on issues related to free culture such as data licensing, open access to scientific research, and orphan works. This therefore represents an opportunity to involve European officials and help advance the cause of open licensing in the EU. This context will tie well into our discussion of government adoption and public sector information.

Warsaw is furthermore a rapidly developing city, with a rich post-war history, an interesting urban legacy of communism (with its specific architecture), and a quickly growing urban and grassroots culture. As such, it offers a creative and inspiring backdrop for the Global Summit.

4.0 License Versions

CC will launch its 4.0 versioning process in conversation with its legal affiliate network and other key stakeholders and license stewards. Among other issues, database rights and forging an international license usable around the world will lead the agenda.

Open Educational Resources

The growth in support for Open Educational Resources around the world has been phenomenal. We will explore how to facilitate even greater access to educational materials for learners in circumstances where free and open are the best, and sometimes only options.

Building Public Support

In addition to organizational discussions, we are planning a day of sessions open to the public to raise the visibility of CC and open licensing with general audiences and support the very active open culture groups in Poland. The public day will include performances by artists embracing open licensing and remixing.

Need for Support

Gathering the Creative Commons Affiliates, our international experts in open licensing, is the best way to share knowledge, adapt to new developments, and remain sensitive to the needs of a global community committed to openness. Our presence in Poland during its EU Presidency can also help amplify our message throughout the continent.

Allowing project leaders from wide-spread countries to meet face to face serves as a catalyst to collaborative projects across regions and on a global-scale. Many teams face similar roadblocks. Usually, at least one team has found a solution to a particular issue. Face to face meetings facilitate easy sharing of leaders’ concerns and the solutions applied in other locations. This is especially true for countries with strong language or cultural ties but who are long distances from each other, such as Latin America and Spain, Canada and France and Macau and Portugal.

It is also important that we mark our tenth anniversary with the global community that made it possible.