[Foundation-l] Regarding the Fundraising Banner

Thu Nov 6 23:41:34 UTC 2008

On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 5:10 PM, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Talking about the banner and currencies, I am not quite sure why some
> languages are in dollars and others are in euros. It might make sense in
> Deutsch (mostly Deutsch people will donate and of course, they will
> donate in euros preferably), but not really in French (canadian, french,
> swiss, algerian etc... all use different currencies). I expect the
> Foundation receive quite a lot from canadians... who will find odd to
> find an american organization propose a donation in euros.
>
> But beyond this, I noted an oddity.
> The banner is currently suggesting donating 30 dollars, 75 dollars or
> 100 dollars per default. Thank god, people can choose to give other
> values and in particular less. Given that the average donation in the
> past was 30 dollars, suggesting 30 dollars as minimal value is... bold.
>
> But other languages, such as german, also propose 30/75/100, but not in
> dollars... in euros. Unfortunately, a 30 dollars today is below 20 euros
> today. So, a minimal gift of 30 euros is more about 40-45 dollars.
> I do not think it is a good idea to suggest different values according
> to languages. Somehow, it strikes me as "unequal". I think we should
> stick to dollars in any cases. Imho.
>
> (I am not going to scream about this, I just find it is not a good idea).
>
> Ant
>
>

I rely on the translators and the people who *live* in the country to
figure out what amount to give.  For example, for Bulgarian we were
definitely not going to do 15 Euros... that's a *lot* of money for
people in Bulgaria (where most of the Bulgarians are).

There really isn't a reason to complain about the currency, there's a
drop-down where you can select the one that you prefer. :-)  We had to
pick the one that fit best with the speakers of the language *and*
that was offered by PayPal (if there was no available option, we'd use
the default: USD).  Within those parameters, I think we are doing a
pretty good job.

If you have any comments about a specific language and find that it
would be way too much to ask of the local people (not something like
"they are asking more of Europeans!" because I agree with Sebmol as he
said earlier), please drop me a line. ;-)

-- 
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023

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