====== VuFind Community Planning: 2020 ======

This page captures planning efforts to formalize the VuFind Community, as discussed during the [[community:conferences:summit_2020|2020 VuFind Summit]].

===== Roles and Responsibilities =====

The contents of this section have been moved to the [[community:roles_and_responsibilities|Roles and Responsibilities]] page. Some outstanding questions are now answered by the Governance Document.

===== Expenses =====

This section lists known and potential expenses that the project will need to meet in order to survive.

==== Fixed Annual Expenses ====

  * Annual OLF membership fees.

==== Other Possible Expenses ====

  * Emergency fund (to hire temporary staff to aid in a leadership transition)
  * Grants/bounties (to encourage development of key features, or expand project participation)
  * Server fees (if we switch from institution-supported project resources to cloud-hosted services)
  * Training costs (to hire trainers and cover other expenses for ongoing training programs)

===== Support =====

The project needs a formal mechanism for receiving support. Some questions to discuss:

  * Do we need to define specific levels/tiers of financial support? Do we need different criteria/options for institutions vs. vendors vs. individuals?
  * What are the benefits of support?
    * A listing on the website?
    * Increased/discounted access to events?
    * Privileged access to certain project roles?
    * Weighted input into decision-making/prioritization?
  * Do we need a formal mechanism for recognizing non-financial support (e.g. commitment to assign institutional resources to a particular role for a particular amount of time)?
  * How can we recognize regional differences (currencies/economic status/language/etc.)?
  * Options beyond membership model:
    * Grant-seeking: this would require a new project role for grant-writing and management; potentially very time-consuming, and with only intermittent/uncertain benefits (but possibility of large windfalls)
    * Service-provision: can the community run training courses or provide services like hosting? This incurs additional expenses and responsibilities. Do we need a formal, well-defined partnership model for these types of services?
    * Sale of content (e.g. books) -- how would we structure this, and how would we differentiate it from free offerings in a fair/useful way? Perhaps a "pay what you wish" model would be a viable option, but this would require infrastructure to set up.
    * Donation solicitations -- many projects ask for donations on their download screen; would this be appropriate for us? Again, administration is a cost.