Bakry's blog

Different responses to crowdfunding campaigns on codeforces!
By Bakry, 22 months ago, In English

Hello codeforces,

We've seen some crowdfundings campaigns on codeforces in the recent years, Mostly about covering travel expenses to IOI, For example:

  • Egypt's IOI2018 team published a crowdfunding campaign in this blog to cover travel expenses to IOI18, and they received 145% of their goal (4,000$) in just a few days.

  • Ukraine's OI published a crowdfunding campaign in this blog to cover the costs of holding an onsite qualification to IOI22, and they received 104% of their goal (goal was 7,292€) in 1-2 weeks, I believe.

  • Greece's IOI2022 team published a crowdfunding campaign in this blog to cover travel expenses to IOI22, and they received 130% of their goal (goal was 12,000€) in 1-2 weeks, I believe.

however, Tunisia's IOI2022 team published a crowdfunding campaign in this blog to cover travel expenses to IOI22 but they received no funds from codeforces! (Here's the donation link).

I believe the Tunisian team (like the Greek team and any other team) deserves to compete onsite in IOI22. Participating online in IOI is pointless because you miss the entire event and only compete in the contest online, making it feel like any other online contest, and they can't find a sponsor because their country is experiencing economic difficulties as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I'm curious why the Tunisian IOI2022 team didn't receive any funding from codeforces community; I initially assumed it was because their crowdfunding was done on a Tunisian website, but I don't think that's the case because the Tunisian website is safe and Ukraine's OI crowdfunding was done on a Polish website and they were successful in reaching their goal. This case appears to be similar to the Greek IOI22 team, but they were successful in reaching their campaign goal. If anyone wants to contribute Here's the donation link, any help would be much appreciated.

I couldn't find an explanation for why the codeforces community responded to the previous campaigns but not to the Tunisian campaign. Please share your thoughts!

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Comments Comments (8)
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22 months ago, # |
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I totally agree with the blog. In my opinion, all teams who have funding issues deserves to compete onsite. Onsite competitions is way different than online competitions. Onsite is better in nearly(if not all) everything.

I noticed though, that most donors come from the same country. But afterall, we all know how important IOI is.

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    22 months ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +21 Vote: I do not like it

    I noticed though, that most donors come from the same country. But afterall, we all know how important IOI is.

    This is not true; for example, the majority of donations received in Egypt's IOI18 team crowdfunding campaign were not made by Egyptians, It was by the members of the codeforces community.

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22 months ago, # |
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On behalf of the tunisian IOI team I want to thank you so much for the blog and we hope that we get the much needed help from our codeforces friends to get the chance to participate onsite and meet each other

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    22 months ago, # ^ |
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    You're Welcome! I really hope you get donation to participate onsite and meet you.

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21 month(s) ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +24 Vote: I do not like it

I hope that the Tunisian team can achieve their crowdfunding campaign target and CF community won't let them down.

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21 month(s) ago, # |
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I hope that the Tunisian team can participate offline ofc. My guess is that possibly since this is the 3rd campaign this year, people didn't donate.

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21 month(s) ago, # |
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Is it possible that you got less donations because the donation page appears in French when it is opened, and not English?

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21 month(s) ago, # |
← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +24 Vote: I do not like it

As I am among the ones who hosted Greece's campaign, of course I believe that all teams deserve to participate onsite in IOIs. But I find your points a bit invalid.

  1. Egypt's campaign was published so that 2 members of the team wouldn't lose the opportunity to participate in IOI AT ALL. There was NOT the ability to participate online. Also, if you had checked out the dates, you would have observed that the blog was posted on August 29, 2018, which is 2 days before IOI in Japan. The description of the campaign states: "All members of the Egyptian team who were told 1 day before the IOI that the government cannot support their flight. Help them go to Japan!".
  2. Do you really want to compare Tunisia to Ukraine, which is currently at war? But let’s forget that for a moment. People also look at the medals each country gets and the level of the country’s participants. Ukraine has 11 gold medals, 34 silver medals and 46 bronze medals in 29 IOIs. Tunisia has 2 bronze medals in 12 IOIs. (I don’t believe this is a good reason not to support the Tunisian Team, but I mention it as I suppose people think about it before donating).
  3. The Greek campaign received about $150-$200 by Codeforces users, about 1% of the donations. The rest 99% came from people in Greece and people we know in other countries.

At the end of the day this is how crowdfunding campaigns work. You can neither force anyone to donate to a campaign, nor blame people for donating to one campaign and not to another. Anyway, I hope the Tunisian Team will be able to travel to Indonesia!

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