Hello, I started donating to my favourite open-source projects a couple years ago, but stopped about 6 months ago for different reasons and wanted to get back into it.

I wanted to ask if anyone here has a set system or process they follow when donating

  • How much money do you donate? A set amount, whatever you feel like, a percentage of your earnings?

  • When do you donate? Whenever you remember, on the first of the month, Thursdays?

  • Do you have a minimum donation amount?

  • How do you decide what projects to support? Do you forego donations if you’ve contributed in other ways? Do you keep a list?

  • Do you donate to all equally or do you have some sort of ranking? Is it by amount of use, subjective preference, something else?

  • What platforms do you prefer using? Liberapay, Opencollective, Patreon, ko-fi, Paypal, Monero, actual post?

So far the system I’ve devised for myself would go something like:

  • put 2 % of all my earnings, whatever they are, in a separate account
  • every quarter (on the first of January, April, July and October) donate the full amount of money in the account (with a minimum of 5 €, so as not to lose a big amount in fees)
  • keep a ranked list of projects that I’ve used or deemed important or promising in the last three months (projects I donated to recently go to the bottom of the list), things at the top get more money than things at the bottom
  • prioritise Liberapay since it’s open-source itself
  • @[email protected]English
    6•3 months ago

    How much money do you donate?

    I am very privileged to have some money left over after fulfilling essential needs. So, I set a fixed amount a while ago, and then whenever I am able to make a saving (e.g. switching to a cheaper phone plan) or get a pay rise (if it ever comes), I’ll put some of the gains into donations.

    When do you donate?

    I remember reading somewhere that many organisations prefer regular donations to one-off donations, even if the regular amount is smaller, since it helps them plan better. So I always give regular donations, even if the amount is smaller to compensate.

    I have everything set up as automatic donations in liberapay and OpenCollective. So, it’s pretty seamless!

    If anyone ever wants to gift me anything, I’ll ask for them to consider a donation to a project instead.

    Do you have a minimum donation amount?

    I try to avoid payments under £5. Below that point, way too much of the money goes to fees. For some projects where I donate a small amount, I donate yearly instead of monthly instead.

    How do you decide what projects to support? Do you forego donations if you’ve contributed in other ways?

    I don’t donate to every project I benefit from, but I care a lot about XMPP and Linux on Mobile, so I donate mainly to projects in these areas. I’ve also contributed code to some of these projects, but I keep donating as I want to support the ongoing maintenance as well as just individual features.

    Do you donate to all equally or do you have some sort of ranking? Is it by amount of use, subjective preference, something else?

    I care about XMPP as a whole succeeding, so I donate to many projects I don’t even use myself. I wanted to donate to clients and servers for each major platform, so I split the clients like this:

    • iOS clients: 1 project
    • Android clients: 1 project
    • Linux clients: 4 projects
    • Server software: 1 project

    Then, I donated an equal amount to each platform (so, for example all the Linux clients combined would get the same as the single Android client).

    However, since I was donating so little to each Linux client, I decided to gradually increase the amount I donate to those over time.

    I’ve also recently started donating to libraries / ancillary projects in the same space. But I don’t have much money left to play with for them, so the amount is smaller :(

    Linux on Mobile is simpler as I only donate to two projects, so I just donate equally to both.

    So, long story short, it started with some kind of structure, but has become more subjective since then :)

    What platforms do you prefer using? Liberapay, Opencollective, Patreon, ko-fi, Paypal, Monero, actual post?

    I really like liberapay, especially as it mostly works without Javascript. But Opencollective is pretty nice too. If the developer themselves gives a preference, I’ll normally use that platform.

    One thing I’m interesting in knowing is - do people generally prefer donating to fewer projects, but with bigger amounts, or vice versa? One criticism of my approach is that, because I am spread quite thin, I risk not really helping any project that much, whereas if I focused on one or two projects, at least those could benefit a bit more.

    • @Linus_Torvalds
      3•3 months ago

      I am all in favor for spreading donations across many - especially smaller - projects. I think that there are two levels to donations:

      • The monetary one. Donating helps fund development either by paying for a full-time dev or by helping the dev stay financially stable to do a bit less work hours so they have time for the project.
      • The psychological one. Most people that publish their code online are not expecting this to become big. And when a stranger from the internet appreciates their code enough for a donation this is a huge motivational factor.

      I even tend to think that donating 5€ more to GIMP is less valuable than giving the money to some random project.