rejon.org is Jon Phillips.

UPDATE and NOTE: This is a year old post, so its not up-to-date…oops…clearing the queue…The original post is here.

I’ve been trying to come up with unconventional ways to raise money for the small non-profit. Yesterday, someone decided to auction off their old web domain and give 90% of the money to Creative Commons. So, I started to think about all the code that is sitting on developers’ shelves, old domains, etc. I wonder if other developers would consider auctioning off domain names, old code, etc, and or just outright donating old code, domain names, etc. to Creative Commons. This code would get licensed so that it would be Open Source and I would even take the time to make a place for it that would be visible and accessible.

Does anyone have any code, failed or sleeping dot.com projects, and/or domain names they would like to donate to CC? CC could then decide what to do with these (auction, put online, developer further, etc). From the likes of the domain name auctions on Ebay, this is a great way to raise funds. However, I’m quite surprised that not more people are trying to sell their code on-line on ebay.

Also, I just now started to wonder about how to apply the similar logic of fundraising of naming certain properties after people, for the web. Like, how much of a donation would it take to get certain tools, sections of a website, or campaigns named after donors?

Maybe I should try this for my site. I could name my next open source tool after someone, for a donation of $1000 USD. Hmmm…maybe I should rename an old project if anyone is interested in this Ideally, also, the name would just be a name and the code would all stay as open source.

What other unconventional tactics can other people think of that would help CC or any nonprofit in the world, raise money to stay in operation? What new possibilities are there? So much time and money is spent on adapting and revolutionizing business, but what about simple nonprofit operations like fundraising?

That’s right. It looks like my old party planning skills are coming in handy once more. I’ve been working with Melissa Reeder and Jennifer Yip at Creative Commons to put together the big CC Birthday Party along with Songbird (the fun music player) for an all out bash next FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15 from 9-2 AM in San Francisco. Also there are parties in other major cities around the world, so please jump on in. Here is a direct link to the cc blog post (to the new cc website which got launched this week…am I sounding like a company man or what ;):

Creative Commons’ 4th Birthday Party is on December 15th. If you are located in the San Francisco Bay Area come celebrate with the CC SF staff at Songbird, the company that brought you the super cool media player. They have generously offered to host our party.

The details:
What: Creative Commons Turns Four!
When: Friday, December 15, 2006, 9pm until 2am
Where: Songbird – 777 Florida Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, CA
Please RSVP to party@creativecommons.org as space is limited.
Since most of CC’s supporters are spread out around the world we thought that it would be awesome to see how many of our international affiliates would interested in hosting CC celebrations of their own!. So even though you may not be able to attend the SF party don’t fret because there are now CC Celebration parties in Warsaw, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Lisbon, Portugal (as part of their initial launch), and New York City. If you don’t see a party in you country, talk to your nearest CC affiliated jurisdiction project lead about having a party or just meeting up in an informal place like your local coffee shop, friend’s house or bar.

If you are unable to make any of those locations but can make it virtually then we can accomodate that too!

Come celebrate with Larry Lessig, Creative Commons’ CEO, Jimmy Wales and Joi Ito to take part in this virtual birthday bash. We will be streaming San Francisco’s live festivities into Second Life. Teleport directly to our land at 9-10pm PST on Kula Island to see the live stream, listen to music, and chat with a few of our favorite progressive thinkers and free culture fans.

As a way for all the global commoners to be able to celebrate together we are asking that everyone document their celebrations with videos and photographs. Upload them with the tag “ccb-day”, “city” (i.e. Berlin), and any other identifying tags, so we can pick them up and channel them through Stage6, the video and image content platform. If you would like to upload to Stage6 directly the format is DiVX. If you are unfamiliar it’s easy to use and they have help for both Macs and PC. The open source application for PC’s is Dr. DiVX and they have how-to videos for Dr. DiVX as well. also host informational videos. We are also encouraging commoners to support CC by uploading a short video or written testimonial about you support CC and use “cc” “testimonial” “city” and any other identifying tags. We want to know your stories and share them with the rest of the world.

Post Quoted from the CC blog

That’s right, don’t miss this week’s CC Salon at http://shinesf.com from 6-9 PM. The line-up is stellar: Homebrew Mobile Club releasing their open source cellphone plans, Flickr.com, Music by the Kleptones, and Annalee Newitz. We are probably going to have 1-2 more speakers added in the next couple of days, as our dec. event is going to be moved to a FRIDAY to celebrate CC’s birthday at a special (free) party.

Oh, to all you ubuntu dev summit goers at google this week, this WED, please come to the city for this event and lets have drinks and talk shop!

I think this will be a good event as well to give out free shirts to people who take footage, video, record audio of the event. Hold me to my word!