GNU Guix: Result of Sustain and Strengthen Fundraising
Results from Guix Fundraising
We're on course to beat our fundraising target to sustain and strength Guix. We're bringing the fundraising campaign to an end, so lets cover how much we've raised and what it means for GNU Guix.
After four months of fundraising we've raised €11378 for the GNU Guix project. This means we've received money for 75% of our €15000 annual goal.
We also pre-registered tickets for Guix Days this year. Pjotr and Manolis have done a stellar job organising it for many years, along with the Declarative and Minimalistic Computing devroom at FOSDEM. Guix Foundation financially supports it as it's a great opportunity for people to spend time together working on improving Guix. Operating a registration system was very successful, raising €3830 which really contributes to covering the event's costs. Thank you everyone who took part!
Recurring donations are critical for the Guix project to be sustainable. If we have certainty that there's a regular stream of donations then we can match it with the recurring costs the project incurs (e.g our build farm). This means there's a lot less risk that we'll suddenly have to reduce the shared resources the project depends on: this is where we were last year when we were weeks away from needing to reduce the hosting.
Between Stripe and Open Collective 136 people have stepped forward to support the project with recurring donations. During December and January 17 new people started regular donations. As we'd expect some people stop donating after a while, over that same period we lost 8 recurring donators.
The recurring monthly donations are €1650. If we annualise those figures then we could be raising about €19800 for the Guix Project this year. This doesn't account for any churn, but nonetheless that's fantastic! The impact of recurring donations is considerable as it means a small amount per month really adds up over time. The maths is simple, but don't underestimate how much it helps!
The more donations we gather the more we can do to support Guix. If you'd like to help out the project whether with a single donation or a recurring donation you can:
SUSE Cares Donation
In December SUSE contacted us to tell us that they'd like to donate $500 to Guix Foundation on behalf of SUSE Cares their philanthropic giving programme. This is an employee programme that enables SUSE employees to support charities of their choice. Tanguy and I have completed the registration documents and we expect to receive the donation shortly. This is fantastic, Thank you SUSE team!
Having some support from organisations that use Guix or are aligned with our mission would be great. If you know of an organisation, company or non-profit that might be able to support Guix please get in contact with me.
What we've learnt
If we take the donations we've received so far, add the registrations from Guix Days and we make a conservative forecast on how recurring donations will come through then we will raise €33900 for Guix over the year. That's over twice the target we set!
That's great and thanks to everyone who's helped Guix. It's been fantastic seeing so many people answer the call to take action and help the project. Guix Foundation has grown with over 100 people joining. This gives us a healthy, user-driven non-profit around Guix.
How we're using the money
The first priority for using the money we've raised is to support and improve the key infrastructure that the project relies on. One way we'll be doing that is by Guix Foundation joining Codeberg e.V. and financially supporting their efforts. This is important for Guix both because their mission of creating a Free Software platform for collaboration aligns with our goals, but also because we directly rely on Codeberg being able to run reliable development infrastructure. As we know running reliable infrastucture is complex and expensive.
Guix Foundation also aims to support development Guix, and the community around it. That could mean sponsoring development, running events and add community services. For Guix Days I put together a talk about the fundraising and our future plans. The talk's available as a PDF, or there's a video (click image for Youtube link):
Source: Planet GNU