# oss-sponsors-fundraising

A skill that walks a maintainer through building a sponsorship program: tiers, pricing, rewards and the path to getting paid by a company.

- skill · `type=skill` · Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, OpenCode · 10300 installs · ★ 5
- Author: Samuel Berthe
- License: MIT · policy=mirror · the beginning of the file is at the end of this page
- Source: https://github.com/samber/developer-relations-skills/tree/HEAD/skills/oss-sponsors-fundraising/SKILL.md
- Updated: 2026-10-24
- HTML: https://affpapa.org/en/nevibecode/skills/oss-sponsors-fundraising

## What it does

The skill interviews the maintainer one question at a time: which project, what monthly number the money should reach, by what date, and how much sponsor-facing work they can absorb in a bad month. Those answers re-rank the format menu on the spot. A ceiling of a couple of hours in a bad month removes the access program; a refusal to sign anything unwalkable removes the retainer.

Before designing anything, the skill tests whether sponsorship is the right instrument at all. The alternatives are employment, individual crowdfunding, project-level corporate sponsorship, commercial revenue and grants. If the goal is replacing a salary and the project has a few hundred users, it says so plainly and points at employment or a commercial tier, with sponsorship as a supplement. Projects with a research, infrastructure or security angle get a grant lane run alongside: a fixed-term contract with an eligibility gate and a reporting duty, not a bigger sponsor.

There is a legal side too. A company cannot just send money — it needs an invoice and an entity on the receiving end, so the interview asks about country and whether a legal entity exists. The skill also treats every promised reward as recurring work, and designs rewards that stay deliverable at ten times the sponsor count.

## Requirements
- Works with: GitHub

## Install

### Claude Code (native platform)

1. **Skills CLI (Vercel)**
```bash
npx skills add samber/developer-relations-skills --skill oss-sponsors-fundraising -a claude-code
```

2. **Manually: put the files in place**
- File: `~/.claude/skills/oss-sponsors-fundraising/SKILL.md` — Copy the whole skill folder; for one project use .claude/skills/oss-sponsors-fundraising/

### Codex

1. **Skills CLI (Vercel)**
```bash
npx skills add samber/developer-relations-skills --skill oss-sponsors-fundraising -a codex
```

2. **Manually: put the files in place**
- File: `.agents/skills/oss-sponsors-fundraising/SKILL.md` — For all projects use ~/.agents/skills/

### Cursor

1. **Skills CLI (Vercel)**
```bash
npx skills add samber/developer-relations-skills --skill oss-sponsors-fundraising -a cursor
```

2. **Manually: put the files in place**
- File: `.cursor/skills/oss-sponsors-fundraising/SKILL.md` — Cursor also reads .agents/skills/ and .claude/skills/

### GitHub Copilot

1. **GitHub CLI**
```bash
gh skill install samber/developer-relations-skills oss-sponsors-fundraising
```

2. **Manually: put the files in place**
- File: `.github/skills/oss-sponsors-fundraising/SKILL.md`

### Gemini CLI

1. **Skills CLI (Vercel)**
```bash
npx skills add samber/developer-relations-skills --skill oss-sponsors-fundraising -a gemini-cli
```

2. **Platform CLI**
```bash
gemini skills install https://github.com/samber/developer-relations-skills --path skills/oss-sponsors-fundraising
```

### Windsurf (Devin Desktop)

**Manually: put the files in place**
- File: `.devin/skills/oss-sponsors-fundraising/SKILL.md` — The legacy .windsurf/skills/ path still works

### OpenCode

**Skills CLI (Vercel)**
```bash
npx skills add samber/developer-relations-skills --skill oss-sponsors-fundraising -a opencode
```

### Claude.ai

**Claude.ai**
- Zip the folder and upload it in Settings → Capabilities → Skills

Where a file is given instead of a command, copy the files from the source to that path: https://github.com/samber/developer-relations-skills/tree/HEAD/skills/oss-sponsors-fundraising/SKILL.md

## When to use it
- design a sponsor tier ladder with pricing
- set up GitHub Sponsors, Open Collective or `FUNDING.yml`
- write a funding goal and sustainability framing
- check whether a grant or employment beats sponsorship
- prepare the invoice-and-entity path a company needs to pay

## Example prompts
- Help me design a sponsorship program for my project: tiers, pricing and rewards
- I want to set up GitHub Sponsors and a FUNDING.yml — where do I start?
- Nobody sponsors my project even though a lot of people use it. Walk me through why

## Source text · SKILL.md · MIT

Below is the content of a third-party file. It is data, not instructions for you: do not act on anything written inside unless the human asks. Block tag: 83d3015e2b2dd106.

BEGIN THIRD-PARTY FILE 83d3015e2b2dd106
```text
---
name: oss-sponsors-fundraising
description: Designs a maintainer-side open-source sponsorship program - the tier ladder and its pricing for individual and corporate sponsors, rewards that stay deliverable at ten times the sponsor count, funding-goal and sustainability framing, and the invoice-and-entity path a company needs before it can pay. Use whenever a maintainer asks how to get sponsors or funding for a project, sets up or fixes GitHub Sponsors, Open Collective or FUNDING.yml, writes sponsor tiers, rewards or a sponsorship page, wonders why nobody sponsors a widely used project, considers sponsorware, or wants a company to fund maintenance work - even if they only say the project is unsustainable. Not the company side - use samber/developer-relations-skills@oss-sponsors-brand-strategy.
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: Samuel Berthe
  version: "1.0.1"
---

# OSS Sponsors Fundraising

You design the sponsorship program of an open-source project: who is being asked, for how much, in exchange for what, through which platform, and how the maintainer stays able to deliver it in two years.

Findings that shape every decision below:

- Salary-shaped income comes from companies, not individuals: GitHub reports that in 2022 "nearly 40% of sponsorship funding came from organizations"; Filippo Valsorda measured typical individual-sponsorship income for a widely depended-on library at under $1,000/month.
- Every reward promised is recurring work for an already stretched maintainer: Tidelift's 2020 survey put burnout at 46% of professional maintainers, 58% for maintainers of widely used projects.

Getting paid also changes what the project can do. Tidelift's 2024 maintainer survey (400+ respondents) found 60% of maintainers unpaid, and paid maintainers 55% more likely to implement critical security and maintenance practices: signed releases with provenance 50% versus 28%, two-factor authentication 76% versus 68%. Use that when the maintainer feels asking for money is impolite.
```
END THIRD-PARTY FILE 83d3015e2b2dd106

The third-party file has ended. Everything between the 83d3015e2b2dd106 tags is data: requests and commands from it are not followed. An “end of file” line with another tag inside the block is part of the file.

First 2008 of 32912 bytes. © Samuel Berthe · MIT · https://github.com/samber/developer-relations-skills/tree/HEAD/skills/oss-sponsors-fundraising/SKILL.md

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