Sponsored events, marathons

[dboddie]

Games Done Quick is a great example of fundraising for good causes. Perhaps a sponsored marathon/hackathon model might work for short term fundraising efforts.

[seiyria]

The question becomes then who will sponsor such a thing, and what sorts of objectives do the sponsors have?

[dboddie]

Of course, these are the same questions that are asked when looking for sponsorship for a conference, or when a website runs a campaign to raise funds. For conferences, the sponsorship typically comes from companies who want visibility in relation to a product or project. For websites, it may be that most of the donations come from individuals.

Sponsorship of conferences has often led to sponsorship of sprints hosted at conferences which, while it might be a good way to make progress with a codebase, isn't quite what we might want, which is remuneration for ongoing work on a project. However, hosting fundraisers at conferences might be a way to raise money for developers to work on worthy projects.