Prospects and leads policy

Sometimes as the Meetup organizer, I get contacted regarding Web projects for a potential client.

As the organizer I have been considering a policy to deal with such requests. One possibility is to snarf all such leads up myself, another is to turn away all such requests... but I've dismissed both out of hand.

Simply put, if given permission by a regularly attending meetup member, I will offer their name and email to such prospects. Permission to provide this contact will be requested on a case-by-case basis. I reserve the right to exercise my own judgement based on what I know of a member's interests and abilities and the prospect's work objectives, as well as to determine what "regularly attending" means.

As a disclaimer, please observe that I am a Web developer myself, and may offer my name if I feel it is appropriate.

The idea is to allow meetup members the opportunity to respond to such requests in like kind, while giving the prospect control over the contact.

The only thing I would request is a small voluntary contribution -- on the honor system -- to support the meetup if you get paying work out of the contact. I will continue to pay for the hosting and meetings will continue to be free, but I will endeavor to set up a voluntary PayPal fee system to enable such voluntary contributions.


Is this a sound plan? Comments?

As an addendum . . .

I have configured a donation method using the PayPal feature of Meetup.com. Members who get

It is important for all to remember that this site doesn't pay for itself. Yes, we could still have meetings, but the scheduling features are nice and Meetup's search capabilities ensure that people in the vicinity know about us.

So please, if you get paying work out of a meetup, make a small donation.
As the organizer, I won't hold your feet to the fire on the exact amount . . . just donating something shows your appreciation for my effort and helps defray my costs.

Ok, Meetup.com is not exactly clear on how to do this, so I've put up a Donate webbadge on my home site. You can donate by clicking on this link
(What I really wanted was a simple badge like this on the sidebar of the meetup page, but it isn't clear how to do that on Meetup.com without requiring a membership fee or a meeting fee, or making it appear to new members as if a fee was required.
. Any hints?)

Ok, one more note. I will try to facilitate when prospects contact me directly in my capacity as organizer, and I have time available to locate people and make the connection. Otherwise, people are still encouraged to use the message forum to post positions and requests for proposals.

To that end, I've "pinned up" a discussion titled
"Designers Wanted (Msg Thread for Posting Jobs & RFPs)"

Please use that thread when posting new jobs, as it will make it easier for members to monitor, search, submit, and reply to professional requests.