Page comparing Snowdrift.coop to other platforms

Clearing the Path
1

This is connected to https://gitlab.com/snowdrift/design/issues/110 - specifically drafting the text and deciding on which platforms to compare to on this page, which will link to Snowdrift Wiki - Other Crowdfunding / Fundraising Services for people who are interested in that level of detail.

The latest mockup from @mray for which I’m working on text and platforms is this:

I’d welcome feedback on the latest draft, which is:

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Platforms to compare to:

Kickstarter, Patreon, Open Collective, Go Fund Me, Ko-Fi, Flattr

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Attributes in the table and text below the table explaining them:

Mutual assurance: As a patron you can rest assured that you’re not donating alone. What you donate is linked to others donating as well. With crowdmatching, it’s a direct link: You donate exactly in proportion to how many others donate too.

Ongoing funding: Our focus is on enabling reliable support for ongoing development and maintenance of public goods, rather than one-time campaigns like those enabled by Kickstarter.

For public goods: We enable funding specifically for public goods. This means all projects funded via Snowdrift.coop produce goods that are fully free and open to all, with no catches, no exclusions or limitations, and no features hidden behind paywalls.

No fees: We want 100% of patrons’ donations to benefit the projects patrons want to support. We encourage all patrons to consider supporting Snowdrift.coop, but we don’t require projects to give us any cut of the donations they receive. (Payment processor fees do not go to Snowdrift.coop.)

Non-profit: We exist only to serve our mission, not to make profits for investors.

Co-op: We run the platform and make all our decisions democratically. Anyone can become a co-op member by becoming a patron of the Snowdrift project.

FLO: Out platform itself is Free / Libre / Open (CC BY‑SA for content except trademarks, and GNU AGPLv3+ for code).

Of course, there are many other crowdfunding platforms out there, including some notable ones like Goteo, CrowdSupply, BountySource, and Liberapay. See our [thorough report] (Snowdrift Wiki - Other Crowdfunding / Fundraising Services)which reviews nearly all of them.

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1 Appreciation
2

Great work! I think this is a usable draft, even though I’d tweak some things.

Note about Flattr: they are extra weird; the fixed zero-sum amount per-patron is distributed by white-listing sites where attention time is tracked. So, only the whitelisting makes it different from all the myriad problems that come from the attention tracking focus of modern ad-based media. I agree including them is fine, but they almost are a different beast where our chart won’t capture what’s weird about them.

Good but lots of redundancy. Assurance/assured; donating/donate/donating/donate/donate; linked/link. I think something that captures that donating with a tiny group is not great either (alone isn’t the only issue). I think the text could reference “coordination” somehow. How about (just some wordings for consideration, not perfect):

Patrons coordinate to encourage a critical mass of support. Each patron knows that they’re part of a larger group — all sharing the burden and making a greater difference together. With crowdmatching, it’s a direct link: You donate exactly in proportion to how many others donate too.

I’d not mention Kickstarter here since it’s clear in the chart, and the concept of a campaign is enough. I suggest:

Instead of one-time campaigns, we provide regular, sustaining donations. Ongoing funding enables reliable and accountable project development.

(key point to include there is accountability, something one-time campaigns notoriously struggle with)

I had a chat with @mray about how we can potentially make a longer, separate explanation of the significance of public goods and the scope of our platform. So, I think we can keep this entry here as short as possible as long as we have other details to link to.

I don’t think we care about the 100% going to projects as the principle. I think the principle we have is that we aren’t creating extra conflict-of-interest or power issues with us being a middle-man. I would use language like this:

We don’t impose fees or take a cut of donations to other projects. Instead, we fund our own development and maintenance as just another project.

This doesn’t state why we do it that way, it just makes it clear what our intended operations are. It should be clear why people may care about that. I see it as just statement about us not using/abusing power in relationships.

The rest of the draft looks good to me!

1 Appreciation
4

I’ve opened a dev issue https://gitlab.com/snowdrift/snowdrift/-/issues/181 for this, but we still need to specify which platforms get which checkmarks. Here’s a format in which we can collaboratively draft that.

Please copy and paste this list and add YES or NO after each question mark where you are clear on the answer. Then the next person to comment can copy and paste the last person’s version and fill in blanks and/or add comments if they disagree on any of them. I’ll fill in a few to get us started:

Kickstarter

  • Mutual assurance? YES
  • Ongoing funding? NO
  • For public goods? NO
  • No fees? NO
  • Non-profit? NO
  • Co-op? NO
  • FLO? NO

Patreon

  • Mutual assurance?
  • Ongoing funding?
  • For public goods? NO
  • No fees?
  • Non-profit? NO
  • Co-op?
  • FLO?

Open Collective

  • Mutual assurance?
  • Ongoing funding?
  • For public goods?
  • No fees?
  • Non-profit?
  • Co-op?
  • FLO?

Go Fund Me

  • Mutual assurance?
  • Ongoing funding?
  • For public goods?
  • No fees?
  • Non-profit?
  • Co-op?
  • FLO?

Ko-Fi

  • Mutual assurance?
  • Ongoing funding?
  • For public goods?
  • No fees?
  • Non-profit?
  • Co-op?
  • FLO?

Flattr

  • Mutual assurance?
  • Ongoing funding?
  • For public goods?
  • No fees? NO
  • Non-profit? NO
  • Co-op?
  • FLO?
5

Kickstarter

  • Mutual assurance? YES
  • Ongoing funding? NO
  • For public goods? NO
  • No fees? NO
  • Non-profit? NO
  • Co-op? NO
  • FLO? NO

Patreon

  • Mutual assurance? NO
  • Ongoing funding? YES
  • For public goods? NO
  • No fees? NO
  • Non-profit? NO
  • Co-op? NO
  • FLO? NO

Open Collective

  • Mutual assurance? NO
  • Ongoing funding? YES
  • For public goods?
  • No fees?
  • Non-profit?
  • Co-op?
  • FLO?

GoFundMe

  • Mutual assurance?
  • Ongoing funding? NO
  • For public goods? NO
  • No fees?
  • Non-profit?
  • Co-op?
  • FLO?

Ko-Fi

  • Mutual assurance?
  • Ongoing funding?
  • For public goods?
  • No fees?
  • Non-profit?
  • Co-op?
  • FLO?

Flattr

  • Mutual assurance? NO
  • Ongoing funding? YES
  • For public goods? NO
  • No fees? NO
  • Non-profit? NO
  • Co-op?
  • FLO?
6

This is a confusing wording. All the platforms may be used for public goods. I think we need more like “public-goods focus” or “only public goods”.

Ignoring that, my updates on the items (table format, can be quoted for others to update easily):

Kickstarter Patreon OC GoFundMe Ko-Fi Flattr
Mutual Y N N N N N
Ongoing N Y Y N Y Y
Public goods N N N N N N
No fees N N N* N Y* N
Co-op N* N N N N N
FLO N N Y N N N

Notes:

  • OC is self-hostable to avoid fees
  • Kickstarter isn’t co-op but B-corp is something
  • Ko-Fi has $6/month flat fee to access features like ongoing donations.
1 Appreciation
7

Same table, prettier / easier to read:

Kickstarter Patreon OC GoFundMe Ko-Fi Flattr
Mutual :heavy_check_mark: :x: :x: :x: :x: :x:
Ongoing :x: :heavy_check_mark: :heavy_check_mark: :x: :heavy_check_mark: :heavy_check_mark:
Public goods :x: :x: :x: :x: :x: :x:
No fees :x: :x: :x:[1] :x: :heavy_check_mark:[2] :x:
Co-op :x:[3] :x: :x: :x: :x: :x:
FLO :x: :x: :heavy_check_mark: :x: :x: :x:

  1. OC is self-hostable to avoid fees ↩︎

  2. Ko-Fi has $6/month flat fee to access features like ongoing donations. ↩︎

  3. Kickstarter isn’t co-op but B-corp is something ↩︎

8

Sorry to bring this up so late: but are we set with the selection of platforms?

The triggering issue is that the layout (especially in small sizes) does not account for 6 platforms to be compared.

On one hand I see the benefit of having a more sensible comparison the bigger the chart – on the other hand we should weight the extra amount of data we confront people with.

  • I think Kofi and Flatter are not necessary.

The compared platforms should be established and well known to position ourselves in the crowdfunding space. Lesser known platforms shouldn’t even be given a platform here :yum:

On a side note I also think we could maintain and link to a more complete overview in the wiki for the extra benefit of having well known but also smaller but relevant projects covered. Historically this seems to be of value for many interested people after all…

2 Appreciations
9

Some reasons to prominently compare to more than the most known:

  • hint at the depth of our understanding of the market
  • avoid implying that we’re exclusive where we aren’t
    • specifically, if we keep the no-fee entry, I’m uncomfortable implying that we’re the only no-fee option out there

I’m not insisting we keep the larger list. I’m just wanting the take-away to be that we’re the only platform that does all this stuff. We want it to be clear that we’re trying to be honest and helpful in the comparison rather than overly exaggerate our uniqueness.

I could imagine the wording of the sentence that links to the wiki doing a good enough job at addressing these concerns, so it’s okay to not fully capture them in the chart.

This is a concern overall, not an objection.

1 Appreciation
10

Agreed. I hadn’t even heard of Kofi outside of maybe seeing it in the wiki page. Flattr does have a different model than the others, but not in a way that’s represented in this chart, so I think it doesn’t add much beyond showing we’ve done our research. And I think that’s handled well enough already, since the current draft in the related gitlab issue includes the names of some other projects with its link to our wiki page.

Agreed, and I think that makes it more useful to compare to platforms that are more like us. Once you know how we’re different from OpenCollective, it’s obvious how we’re different from GitHub Sponsors. I think we definitely still want Kickstarter and Patreon, since they are the most popular, but I’m not sure we need GoFundMe (it could replace Kofi in the sentence above).

To that end, I think it might make sense to include Liberapay instead of GoFundMe (or OpenCollective); it’s probably the closest to us — ongoing, no-fees (self-funded), non-profit, and itself FLO — so I imagine that’s the first question anyone familiar with the space would have (the other entries are for people not as familiar).

11

That’s actually very true.

12

OpenCollective probably more significant Liberapay, probably more total fund processing (didn’t review the stats), more well-known.

I’m fine with dropping Kofi and GoFundMe. I think adding Liberapay makes sense as it fixes the issue with showing who else is closest. Liberapay is certainly closer, and we can check off that it is FLO and no-fee.

So, I’d go with 4 besides us (5 total): Patreon, Kickstarter, OpenCollective, Liberapay

FWIW, those are the ones that I’ve ever had anyone ask about, like explicitly say “how do you compare to X?” and never had that for GoFundMe or Flattr or most others.

13

Updated:

Kickstarter Patreon OpenCollective Liberapay
Mutual-assurance :heavy_check_mark: :x: :x: :x:
Ongoing support :x: :heavy_check_mark: :heavy_check_mark: :heavy_check_mark:
Specifically for public goods :x: :x: :x: :x:[1]
No fees :x: :x: :x:[2] :heavy_check_mark:
Co-op and/or non-profit :x:[3] :x: :x: :heavy_check_mark:
FLO itself :x: :x: :heavy_check_mark: :heavy_check_mark:

  1. Liberapay has a FLO focus but doesn’t limit or curate the projects. ↩︎

  2. OC is self-hostable to avoid fees ↩︎

  3. Kickstarter is at least a certified B-corp with an explicit social mission alongside profit ↩︎

14

I really like the update I just posted above. It’s cleaner and does a better job of trying to show what we are closest to (thus making a better comparison).

15

Experimenting with using a different character for the footnote spots…

Kickstarter Patreon OpenCollective Liberapay
Mutual-assurance :heavy_check_mark: :x: :x: :x:
Ongoing support :x: :heavy_check_mark: :heavy_check_mark: :heavy_check_mark:
Specifically for public goods :x: :x: :x: :heavy_multiplication_x:[1]
No fees :x: :x: :heavy_multiplication_x:[2] :heavy_check_mark:
Co-op and/or non-profit :heavy_multiplication_x:[3] :x: :x: :heavy_check_mark:
FLO itself :x: :x: :heavy_check_mark: :heavy_check_mark:

  1. Liberapay has a FLO focus but doesn’t limit or curate the projects. ↩︎

  2. OC is self-hostable to avoid fees ↩︎

  3. Kickstarter is at least a certified B-corp with an explicit social mission alongside profit ↩︎

1 Appreciation
16

…and with putting the footnotes at the top instead of in the table…

Kickstarter[1] Patreon OpenCollective[2] Liberapay[3]
Mutual-assurance :heavy_check_mark: :x: :x: :x:
Ongoing support :x: :heavy_check_mark: :heavy_check_mark: :heavy_check_mark:
Specifically for public goods :x: :x: :x: :heavy_multiplication_x:
No fees :x: :x: :heavy_multiplication_x: :heavy_check_mark:
Co-op and/or non-profit :heavy_multiplication_x: :x: :x: :heavy_check_mark:
FLO itself :x: :x: :heavy_check_mark: :heavy_check_mark:

  1. Kickstarter is at least a certified B-corp with an explicit social mission alongside profit ↩︎

  2. OpenCollective is self-hostable to avoid fees ↩︎

  3. Liberapay has a FLO focus but doesn’t limit or curate the projects. ↩︎

17

…and with putting the footnotes on the side.

Kickstarter Patreon OpenCollective Liberapay
Mutual-assurance :heavy_check_mark: :x: :x: :x:
Ongoing support :x: :heavy_check_mark: :heavy_check_mark: :heavy_check_mark:
Specifically for public goods[1] :x: :x: :x: :heavy_multiplication_x:
No fees[2] :x: :x: :heavy_multiplication_x: :heavy_check_mark:
Co-op and/or non-profit[3] :heavy_multiplication_x: :x: :x: :heavy_check_mark:
FLO itself :x: :x: :heavy_check_mark: :heavy_check_mark:

  1. Liberapay has a FLO focus but doesn’t limit or curate the projects. ↩︎

  2. OpenCollective is self-hostable to avoid fees ↩︎

  3. Kickstarter is at least a certified B-corp with an explicit social mission alongside profit ↩︎

18

Curious what @msiep will think, but I don’t like the footnotes being outside the actual relevant spot in the chart.

I’d prefer a different but still red symbol, maybe a - instead of x. We don’t want a skimming look to mistake it for a check-mark. And really, the footnote being in the right context is enough to make it clearly distinct from a check-mark. So, I like the first variant you did.

1 Appreciation
19

Footnotes on the side is the cleanest alternative in my eyes: it does notfiddle with the parts that you actively use when evaluating visually.

I also like the set of platforms as it shows:

  1. we are in the same ballpark as the big ones
  2. there are alternatives with “Libre” and “Open” backgrounds
  3. we are closer to the alternatives but blow them out of the water still :wink:
1 Appreciation
20

@mray’s mockup actually has blank squares for “no” rather than X’s…

image
image557×1160 89.3 KB

…which is visually cleaner to start with, but also might allow for putting footnote indicators in those blank squares in a way that would work visually. It would need to still be very clear that the squares with footnotes in them had more in common with the blank squares than with the squares with the checkmarks in them.

2 Appreciations
21

Awesome idea. You mean like this?

image
image738×698 32.1 KB

1 Appreciation