I talked to Flickr’s Tara Kirchner, the Senior Marketing Manager of Flickr at Yahoo!, and recorded the conversation so that I can present it here on the site.
Some of the portions of this podcast are really more or less directed at Executive Directors and Development Directors. I guess the intention is for my fellow techies to play it back for their management staff. That conversation starts at 8:09 in the MP3.
There’s also a good explanation as to why Flickr for Good uses Techsoup to help them process new applications for Flickr for Good. I have to admit that myself and others have a bit of a reservation regarding Techsoup’s $3 processing fee. The only value that I see Techsoup is adding is ensuring that a real nonprofit is actually using a Flickr for Good license. Is a database call worth $3?
I also discussed a more advanced usage of Flickr for Good. You can use it as an informal digital assets management system for all your public images. This is actually a pretty good deal for those of you who serve nonprofits that have a stack of pictures just collecting dust in some corner.
Anyway, without further ado, here’s the podcast:
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my question is: is this just a 1 year free account? after the 1 year will it have to be renewed at $25/yr? seems like that would render this a bit useless if nonprofits are trying to save money. 1 year is great, but not if i fill it with great photos and then it drops to a free account when it’s not renewed at $25 for every year after that…
any info on this?
Hey Jonathan, I was hoping to have an answer to you by now but I’ve notified the Flickr people about your request and am awaiting their response. Great question though.
@jonathan renich: Here’s the official response from Tara Kirchner, Flickr’s Marketing Manager:
“The program is a one time donation for one-year pro accounts. We’re providing nonprofits who may not have known the benefits of a photo sharing community an opportunity to try it out for a year. After the one year term, non profits can choose to either renew the Pro subscription at the regular cost or use the free version of Flickr.
The free services allows you to post as many pictures as you like, as long as you don’t exceed a predetermined bandwidth limit during a given time period (currently, 100MB per month). If you pass 100MB in one month, you will have to wait until the next month to start uploading again. One other limit is the number of images that can be seen at one time, free accounts can only share 200 images at a time. The rest are still stored but can not be seen unless you delete other images or upgrade to a Pro account. When your Pro account expires, none of your photos are actually deleted they will be still stored but only show 200 images at a time.”
BTW, I think $25 is a pretty reasonable fee for Flickr Pro. I know for the tiny nonprofit that that’s a bit of a problem but hey, you’ve got a year for free. If you can’t raise $25 to pay for Flickr after the first year, you probably should make it a greater priority to market your organization. There are other photosharing sites out there though so you might want to take a look at those!
@allan
thanks so much for researching this for us and seeing what is possible. i figured this is what was happening, it still is a great deal and it’s true, $25 isn’t that much. i was just wondering if flickr was going pro nonprofits long term and providing services like dreamhost, or youtube, or other sites are now providing for nonprofits.
thanks for the clarification! it’s still a great deal but something i wish they would clarify more before a ton of people signup thinking they can renew at that $6 price every year instead of $25.
No problem, Jonathan,
For myself, I use Flickr and have paid for the pro account for socialmarkets.org. I’ll see if Tara could post something like that notice to the sign-up form so that people understand their options for year 2.
Hi Allan and Jonathan, that is REALLY good feedback. I’ll pass it on to TechSoup to make the change to the text!