Open Source
Endowment
Truly
sustainable funding
sustainable funding
for critical OSS through a community‑driven
endowment
Sustainable
Provides a stable, long-term funding model, independent of volatile corporate and personal budgets.
Systemic
Supports the critical but underfunded open source projects that conventional models miss.
Efficient
A lean, digital-first, community-led organization designed for maximum impact and transparency.
Supported by Open Source Creators, Founders, Executives, and Investors
Open source underpins the critical infrastructure of the global tech ecosystem, and the community-driven Endowment is a wonderful initiative to pursue its long-term sustainability.
Mitchell Hashimoto
Co-founder, HashiCorpThe global open-source community shares many parallels with how the best universities work, and we are thrilled to adopt their private endowment model to sustainably fund OSS maintainers.
Konstantin Vinogradov
Founder, Varion VenturesThe Endowment is a very promising project. I am happy to join and pretty excited to see how it contributes to the FOSS funding ecosystem.
Kailash Nadh
CTO, ZerodhaKeeping open source sustainable is a global challenge, and the Open Source Endowment provides a very promising long-term way to fund essential yet non-commercializable OSS. I'm excited to support it as a founding donor.
Jan Oberhauser
Founder & CEO, n8n
Paul Copplestone
Co-founder & CEO, Supabase
Alexey Milovidov
Co-founder & CTO, ClickHouse
Evan You
Creator, Vue.js & Vite
Thomas Dohmke
ex CEO, GitHub
Shay Banon
Founder & CTO, Elastic
Daniel Stenberg
Founder, cURL
Igor Sysoev
Co-founder, Nginx
Sam Bhagwat
Co-founder & CEO, Mastra
Wes McKinney
Creator, Pandas & Apache Arrow
Tracy Hinds
Chair, Open Source Initiative
Amy Parker
Vice President, Signal Foundation
Maxim Konovalov
Co-founder, Nginx
Chris Aniszczyk
CTO, Linux Foundation
Samuel Colvin
Founder & CEO, Pydantic
Chad Whitacre
ex Head of Open Source, Sentry
See other 90+ donors → Solving Open Source Sustainability Together
Our world runs on open source software that is largely built and maintained by unpaid volunteers. Unstable funding of critical OSS poses serious risks for all of us.
Critical but Fragile Infrastructure
Maintainer burnout and lack of funding often lead to bugs and security incidents, as seen with Log4Shell, the XZ Utils backdoor, and Heartbleed. Unsustainable OSS funding makes critical infrastructure more fragile, and AI code generation only accelerates this trend.
Community Endowment
Successfully used by universities for centuries, endowments spend only investment returns from donations to advance their causes, weathering economic and political volatility.
Similarly, the Endowment leverages the global tech community as "open source alumni" to sustainably fund critical OSS. It's an open charity, and we welcome everybody — every contribution matters!
Next-Gen Nonprofit,
Based on Principles
Data-Driven & SMART
Employs a data-driven and goal-specific strategy, ensuring every donation makes a measurable difference.
Global Outlook
Supports the long-term health of the global open source supply chain, not of specific countries, companies, or ecosystems.
Maximum Transparency
Provides open data, public governance processes, and clear accountability in all funding decisions and operations.
Inclusive Governance
Empowers its open donor community to shape key strategic decisions, prioritizing individuals over companies.
Decentralized Funding
A broad funding base from diverse sources makes every contribution meaningful and fosters community governance.
Neutrality
Remains independent from political or corporate influence, ensuring unbiased, mission-driven funding for the public good.
How It Works
- 01
Fundraising
Individuals, companies, and other nonprofits donate to the endowment fund, forming its permanent principal, which is preserved in perpetuity.
Join our 117 donors → - 02
Investing
The principal is invested in a low-risk portfolio that generates sustainable returns. We aim to spend only ~5% on grants each year, reinvesting the rest.
Investment strategy → - 03
Grantmaking
We distribute grants based on an open, data-driven model, co-developed with OSE Members and the open source community.
Grant program →
Governance
The Endowment is managed by individual donors with skin in the game — 69 OSE Members — who participate in strategic discussions, shape the grant-making model, and will appoint board directors in the future. Every board director is an OSE Member.
OSE Board and team →