2019 saw the launch of Sponsors, a platform that allows users to support software creators.
A number of improvements to GitHub’s Sponsors programme have been revealed. Developers participating in the programme can add a “Sponsor Me” button to their GitHub repositories and get donations sent straight to their bank accounts. According to GitHub, Sponsors has provided more than $33 million in financial assistance to thousands of open-source developers across 68 regions since its debut.
According to GitHub, this is particularly significant because corporate sponsorship is worth, on average, nearly fifteen times as much as individual sponsorship, and because 90 percent of businesses use open source software in some capacity. GitHub is eager to increase industry investment.
Over 3,500 people contributed to the beta programme for the new feature, including representatives from AWS, American Express, Shopify, and Mercedes Benz. Nearly 40% of sponsorship financing in 2022 came from businesses.
Adding bulk sponsorships to the programme is a second addition. This implies that with just one click, a company may create a list of the projects and maintainers they depend on and sponsor them all.
Announcing the addition, GitHub states: “Organizations sponsoring at scale need better ways to make multiple sponsorships. Last year, GitHub sponsored over 900 of our identified open source dependencies at once and today we’re bringing that tooling to you, too. Bulk sponsorships are built into our GitHub Sponsors Explore page so that you have an easy way to get started with your sponsorable dependencies at hand and they’re now exportable as a CSV, too.”
