Developers Guide To Sponsorware

What is Sponsorware?

Sponsorware is a new take on an older concept which allows developers to get paid to create open source projects. Historically, developers created a Patreon or Kickstarter page to fund their endeavors. The funding would be used to create the first version of the game or piece of software for release. The primary source of funding would have been the developers immediate community, which in many occasions consisted of family and friends.

The goal of sponsorware is to create a new library, framework or tool that is backed by a sponsor. As an investor and software developer myself, I like sponsoring developer projects through our flutter/dart discord community. Sponsors are a little different than donors however, in that a donor is not always looking to receive something in return for their donation. A donor could be a friend or family member that may or may not understand or care about what you are building. A donor may simply want to support your efforts because of a prior personal relationship.

With sponsorware, usually there is a specific end goal and a focus that needs to be attached to the project in order to obtain sponsorship. When I ran the Open Source ERP Hackathon a couple of years ago, our sponsors came onboard because they believed in our mission. And not unlike an investor, a sponsor may actually have some influence in what ultimately gets built. They may even get early access to your software before it is released into the wild.

Finding a Sponsor

Patreon and Github are two well known methods of finding a sponsor for your project. In github for example, you can go to https://github.com/sponsors and find a project to sponsor, or seek sponsorship. As the sponsorware approach increases in popularity, so will the competition. To ensure you stand out, ensure your offering is unique and that you are clear about what you are asking for. As an example:

• Gratitude/Appreciation: $5
• Sponsors get priority support: $15
• Influencing/Voting on the project roadmap: $50
• 1hr/month video-call/consult with sponsor’s company/team: $125

These of course are not the only means of finding a sponsor. Many people who want to support your project will never be a github or patreon user — so you may not want to limit your scope to just those platforms. Below are three alternatives worth exploring.

Social Community

Your social community knows you the best. Even if the platform you are currently on does not offer a way to monetize your audience directly, below is a small sample of others that can.

• Tribe
• Podia
• Buy Me A Coffee
• Memberful
• Ko-fi
• Subscribestar

Crypto Currency Community

In our discord community, we’ll start accepting crypto currency soon as a form of payment (Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, or Bitcon Cash). While cryptocurrency has a relatively small impact in terms of global revenue transactions, more people and businesses around the world are starting to accept it. You may find that more people in your community are willing to pay in bitcoin vs cash. I co-authored a white paper about the topic back in 2018 — Click here to download.

Larger Companies

Many large corporations support open source initiatives. While the process to obtaining open source funding is more intensive, usually the amount of funding is larger. Consider that for the 2020 tax year, the IRS advised that C corporations can write off up to 25 percent, provided it’s a cash donation.

If they donated property rather than cash, they were usually able to claim the fair market value as a write-off. This makes business sense from both sides. Companies like Redhat, Mulesoft and Databricks come to mind.

Sponsorware Is Not Always Cash

While cash is nice, it is not the only way to get your open source project supported. For example, in our discord community, we operate like a No-Seed Investor and provide free devops as a service and marketing as a service support to all of the open source Flutter/Dart projects

Just because open source software is free does not mean you always have to rely on the kindness of strangers. Instead offer something that is valuable to a larger community group so that people can understand and support your goals.