Members of the delivery team have now met to unpick and unpack some of the suggested first funded features. We’ve gone through examining the proposals to try and understand the scope and size.
For our first funded feature we are limiting it to something that is small in size. This means less than 3 days dev time, less that 0.5 days design, less than 0.5 days product. We’ve whittled our original list of 11 proposals down to 5 realistic options.
Next we’d like a representative from all instances wishing to participate in this process to let us know how sexy you think these features are. In particular we’d like to know:
How much is this feature wanted by enterprises within your instance?
Do you think enterprises will contribute funding toward this feature?
To try and make the feedback process as simple as possible we’ve created this simple form so that you can give your opinions on each of the 5 proposals.
Hi everyone,
Thanks for filling in the form for your instance to give an indication of the features we would would most like to fundraise for. Here are the results:
1: Direct Links/URLs to Products
Desire Average Score: 6.64
Fundability Average Score: 3.64
2: Notify Producers Button - add shopper names
Desire Average Score: 6.73
Fundability Average Score: 3.37
3: Product Export
Desire Average Score: 5.82
Fundability Average Score: 3.18
4: Tagging Order Cycles to Shipping/Payment methods
Desire Average Score: 7.27
Fundability Average Score: 3.81
5: Alert manager when Order Cycles reaches certain number of orders
Desire Average Score: 5
Fundability Average Score: 2.55
So, the most wanted and most fundable feature is: Tagging Order Cycles to Shipping and Payment Methods.
Three instances indicated that their users would be likely to contribute funds: Australia, UK and US.
It would be good to understand how much these instances think they can raise for this feature. @chez@lauriewayne1 and @lbwright22 Do you have an estimate?
A question for other/all instance managers - is there anything else that you would like in order to approach your users with this request for funds? What would make it easy? Or do you feel like you have enough information to approach your users and let them know we are raising funds for this work?
I’d really like to make this process easy, though am not sure what would help. So I’m very open to any ideas or suggestions
Thanks for sharing.
Regarding your question: I think a clear explanation of why the feature is useful, how the users will benefit from it and how it is going to work will help. Basically the information which we have in the wishlist template, but written in a way that everyone understands.
The UK team have come up with the following provisional strategy:
Contact hubs and users who have asked for this feature in the past
One-to-one phone calls or emails from team members who have a strong relationship with the hub
Emphasis the ‘global’ nature of the crowdfunding campaign and how it is ‘investing in a sustainable future’/‘an investment in the movement’.
Perhaps connect hubs with those in other countries who also invest.
Perhaps more on the OFN UK social media and in our Thriving Hub FB group about global OFN projects in general and helping newer instances.
We may post about the crowdfunding campaign itself in our Thriving Hubs FB group but won’t be posting about it on our ‘public’ social media. We haven’t decided yet.
In terms of ‘how to sell’ the new feature to users:
Increased flexibility for selective National Delivery: The same hub can have an order cycle with non-perishable items only tagged with National Delivery shipping and another order cycle (with all products) for local collection only.
This will be a big bonus for Christmas and gifting: customers of hubs with strong local foods (Scotch whisky, Cornish apple juice…) will be able to send locally made gifts from the hub to friends and family in other parts of the country.
Also meat/fish producers who can ship frozen items nationally but wish to sell fresh goods locally too.
Enables multiple collection days of the week: This is particularly attractive to ‘shops’ which have physically open collection points (their bricks and mortar shops) 7-days a week. Customers can select and order cycle based on when they wish to collect and there will be less confusion.
Different collection points/days of the week with different product range all under one brand. Many food hubs in the UK talk about expanding and setting up ‘sub hubs’ or ‘daughter hubs’ but want it all under one ‘Enterprise umbrella’. This would enable HUB A to have one order cycle with shipping method of collection in location D and another with collection in location E, but slightly different product range if the same producers can’t supply to both.
At present the complexity of setting up a new enterprise on the platform is a barrier to the ‘daughter hubs’ from opening.
Wholesale and retail versions of the hub all under one brand: tag wholesale customers so that only they can see the wholesale order cycles and then enable different payment options (BACS) and shipping methods (day of the week, national delivery, collection point) for those order cycles only.
At present the complexity of setting up a new enterprise on the platform is a barrier to the ‘wholesale hubs’ from opening.
Easier to charge more/different rates for pre-order order cycles. This is another things which is very attractive for Christmas sales.
Easier to charge more for wholesale shipping (which is large volumes and costs more to move).
After some initial explorations talking to users and instance managers about crowdfunding for Linking Order Cycles to Shipping/Payment Methods it’s time for an interation and round two of this process.
Feedback:
Many users were interested in crowdfunded features but didn’t necessarily want to fund this specific feature.
Many instances wanted to be able to point users to somewhere so they could see how it would look
Most users only wanted to contribute quite small amounts
Users need invoices from their instance in order to be able to send the payments
So that brings me to the introduction of iteration two!
Firstly we’ll present a list of options of features that we’re crowdfunding at this time. As crowdfunded features is currently a trial this is a small and curated list that meet specific requirements of being small sized and having wide appeal. You can see an example of what this page will look like here.
Secondly, each of the features will have a description including some images, an ability to pledge and a little chart showing how much has been pledged. In this trial we are just doing this simply with gogle forms but we can look at something more bespoke and robust as the explorations continue. You can see an example of what a feature fundraising page will look like here.
What do we need from instance managers to make this happen?
I need to know if you would like your instance to participate in the fundraising during this trial process. To participate you will need to:
agree to invoice any users that wish to contribute from your instance and forward this funding to the global pot.
provide any translated pages and translated text such that I can create the translated offer for you and your relevant pages
promote this to your users and support them to understand and contribute.
If you would like to have your instance involved in this process then let me know and we can discuss in more detail. Happy to answer any questions
Hi @lin_d_hop,
Thanks again for driving this! OFN_DE will also participate. We’re not expecting too much since we are still small. But hey - better than nothing…
Hi Lin, OFN Ireland have been very poor interacting with Discourse. I don’t think we are accompanying any of the threads very well. But now that I have seen this I will bring it back to the rest of the Irish crowd and try to bring you an answer as soon as possible. Do you have a dealine for this?
I will get back to you as soon as I can get an answer from the others, but if you need to move it forward before you hear back go ahead. and promise will try to keep a better attention on Discourse.
Sam from OFN Ireland here. I’m 100% behind the concept of crowfunding features from amongst the instances / external.
Where are you planning to generate the ideas from - are they coming from existing issues that you believe will attract support, or is it based on existing priorities of specific instances?
Finally - just wanted to flag in case you weren’t aware that Open Collective have this new feature called projects.
You could set up a project for each proposed feature - and instances / funders / individuals could chip in, and once the budget is met, the work continues.
If the feature isn’t going ahead, or isn’t funded after a period of time… you can close the project / refund everyone.
Hi Sam,
Thanks for this. Great that you are behind it.
A couple quick responses:
We are starting with a trial of 3 S sized features. We can talk about the long term after the trial but the probability is that for at least the next year only well specified S sized issues will be crowd fundable. We can explore larger sized issues if the trial goes well.
The Open Collective feature functionality has a few limitations. You can only have 1 currency. You pay without an invoice. We dont know which instance will need to invoice which has tax implications. It has been looked at and just isnt functional for the use case. Though if you want to use Open Collective for IE specific fundraising feel free.
