Kudos to Open Collective (for this, and for existing in general).
The article doesn't go into detail, but it also appears to streamline the workflow of requesting money from an open source project's perspective.
Each fund[0] appears to have a "Request Grant" button, which is great, as it'll mean maintainers will hopefully have a curated list of contactable organisations if they need funding for a specific initiative.
The barriers to entry here are extremely high: a few days ago I was looking into corporate sponsorship for a non open-source-related event, and after a couple of hours of Googling I was mostly unable to find contact details for relevant companies. It's definitely a natural barrier to entry which will be reduced with experience, but it will gatekeep a lot of interesting projects where organisers aren't experienced in fundraising.
Reducing this friction for Open Source projects should allow the money to much more easily go to where it's needed.
[0] Example fund: https://opencollective.com/indeed
The article doesn't go into detail, but it also appears to streamline the workflow of requesting money from an open source project's perspective.
Each fund[0] appears to have a "Request Grant" button, which is great, as it'll mean maintainers will hopefully have a curated list of contactable organisations if they need funding for a specific initiative.
The barriers to entry here are extremely high: a few days ago I was looking into corporate sponsorship for a non open-source-related event, and after a couple of hours of Googling I was mostly unable to find contact details for relevant companies. It's definitely a natural barrier to entry which will be reduced with experience, but it will gatekeep a lot of interesting projects where organisers aren't experienced in fundraising.
Reducing this friction for Open Source projects should allow the money to much more easily go to where it's needed.
[0] Example fund: https://opencollective.com/indeed