Community in business (2)

From CP2 discussion I took that table to KM4dev, read here about the process.
So what were some of the results of our discussions about self financing options for communities? After all this talking, I myself feel like I have really come to understand the issue at a deeper level. However if I look at the actual results they seem meager, almost cliché.
See below the smaller table.

possible sources of revenue	types	examples
Volunteer time		as in ultra-lights, and in many other communities as well. community members and leaders contribute their time for they see value (eg. learning, contacts, prior investment in network)
Membership fees	individual members
	corporate members
Transaction based fees	selling goods or services	books, events, training, reports, qualifications, recruitment/headhunting, ‘insight’ into community, advise, lobbying, consulting, research, publishing, advertising
	either within the community or outside
	sometimes services are custom made to client, eg sponsors who pay for specific task
parent organization / sponsorship for ‘general’ task	eg. FAO communities (are almost internal communities, fully dependent) eg2. the 6 dutch orgs who collabaratively sponsored km4dev2007-event
Donations	some blogs, many open source software projects
Public / research (EU?) projects	community may be result of project, or “carrier”of other projects

In KM4dev we had to report on our project, but powerpoint presentations were not allowed. We rebelled, and made a powerpoint as cheezy as possible. Here it is Community in business.ppt

Insights

• Financial models cannot be seen as separate from the content or organizational model of the community. Value for members is overriding principle in everything. Except in financial terms, site statistics help to understand what represents value to users.
• The real basic models are few (transaction, membership and some more that are difficult to classify under those main two), but variation within those is wide. Transaction fees over products and or services seems what is most interesting, most divers. Within that, there seem to be no real “basic models” that have proved to work for large numbers of communities.
• Advertising by itself is not usually a viable option for communities that are not huge.
• The lack of legal entity is a constraint as well as a blessing. Work-arounds are to borrow the entity and structures of others. If rotated this can result in a autonomous community.
• The ultra-light model, for many reasons, seems to be the only “no-headache” option.

Questions

• Can we find a few well-documented or well-known communities of each type, to act as case-studies?
• Sometimes communities stop existing because funding stops. Is there a moral and a commercial ground for ‘taking over’ communities that run out of funding; like a foster home for orphaned communities?
• Can we think of a cost-covering basic model for communities for local development?
• How can communities and associations collaborate?
• Most communities “grow” from companies or ngo’s. Can it be the other way around? Can an existing community jointly decide to become a company or ngo? What does it mean for the commuity? Examples?
• Sermo is an example where the communitiy is funded because insurance companies like (=pay) to watch the ongoing interactions between physicians. What are parallels in other settings? Policy makers like to “watch” agricultural communities, migrant communities, marketeers may want to watch consumer communities. Who might be interested in your community?
• There is quite some thinking on sustainability of organizations. Can we borrow / think similarly for communities?

Josien Kapma – Portugal