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2for1, give to Drupal 8 and get an ROI of 200%

CEO, Co-Founder
Apr 03, 2015

Two weeks ago the Drupal association launched the d8accelerate fundraising campaign on Crowdrise. An important initiative — the Drupal ecosystem needs Drupal 8 to come out really soon now. But again an already familiar pattern is emerging: While there is an incredible solidarity between Drupal developers, very little money in comparison is raised from the largest group of beneficiaries of Drupal: the site owners. To be fair, they have been given very little incentive to contribute. It’s great that every dollar has been matched, but what’s in it for the site owners? Even if they don’t do anything, Drupal 8 will probably get finished anyway, right? And besides, if Drupal 8 doesn’t come out, they can just keep on using Drupal 7 and save the upgrade costs, or maybe use some other CMS (gasp).

An emotional appeal is not going to change our customer’s behaviour, we need to give them incentives that their management understands…

Why we need an ROI of 200%

For most businesses that own a Drupal site it is going to be extremely hard to donate money to a fund that is going to be allocated to a purpose that doesn’t directly contribute to their business goals. It is totally unclear what they are getting in return. Only extremely enlightened businesses can act under those circumstances. It’s unrealistic to expect site owners to pay large amounts of money, at most we will see a few individuals that work at those companies pony up some of their personal charity cash for the cause. If we go this route we will never raise another 100’000$.

That is why we are going to give our (future) customers an incentive they can explain to their management: an ROI of 200% on the money they spend on Drupal 8 fundraising initiatives we support. We are challenging all other consultants in the ecosystem to follow suit.

You see, every day that Drupal 8 is delayed, is bad for our business. The uncertainty is causing our customers to delay investments. And we are missing out on more than just some delayed upgrade projects. I’ve seen companies that postpone investing in responsive design on a Drupal 6 site because they are waiting for Drupal 8 to come out. This hurts everybody’s business, also our customer’s. Don’t get me wrong, we have plenty of work, but we are losing a lot of value, potential growth and developer happiness.

2 for 1

So how can we ensure that ROI? Simple:

We will give a discount of 2 dollars for every dollar our (future) customers invest in any of the initiatives we endorse, and that for up to a maximum of 10% on the budget of the Drupal 8 projects they will run with us in the future. So if you for example donate 10k$ to the 2for1 Team on Crowdwise, you can get a 20k$ discount on an aggregate budget of 200k$.

The d8accelerate program is just a first project we want to support like this. Later - as part of the http://d8upgrade.org/ upgrade notification service - we will also support fundraising campaigns for the contributed modules you need to upgrade your site.

If you want to join the 2for1 initiative, and be listed on the contributing partners section, send us a mail at 2for1+consultant@pronovix.com

If you are planning a Drupal 8 project, and you would like to do well by doing good and capture a 10% discount, contact us at 2for1+discount@pronovix.com

I want to end with a shout out to Susan Rust and Karl Scheirer from Top Shelf Modules, it was through a very long inspiring discussion with them at Drupalcon that the idea for d8upgrade and 2for1 was born. Originally we wanted to implement it as part of Top Shelf Modules, but because of time pressures I had to make things a lot simpler and this is the result. Thank you Karl and Susan, rock on!

Kristof Van Tomme is an open source strategist and architect. He is the CEO and co-founder of Pronovix. He’s got a degree in bioengineering and is a regular speaker at conferences in the API, developer relations, and technical writing communities. He is the host of the Developer Success & the Business of APIs and the API Resilience podcasts.

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