Our Mission
The Open Source Endowment (OSE) is a community endowment dedicated to sustaining the critical open source projects the world relies on.
We aim to solve the open source maintenance crisis with a new funding solution that is truly sustainable, systemic, and efficient.
Our cornerstone is the endowment model, which universities and cultural institutions have successfully used for centuries. However, this approach had never been applied to open source before OSE.
Founded in 2025 by more than 60 tech founders, executives, investors, and engineers, OSE is a lean next-gen nonprofit. It's designed as a scalable tool for the tech community to support the public good they care about.
Governance
The Open Source Endowment Foundation is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) US public charity with a global focus. Its bottom-up governance is inspired by the best universities and revolves around passionate people with "skin in the game," not corporations.
We strive to meet best-in-class standards of neutrality, transparency, and efficiency.
117Donors
OSE welcomes all individual and institutional donors who would like to leave a lasting impact on the open source ecosystem and improve its sustainability.
The donor list is public and regularly updated.
69Members
People contributing $1,000+/year qualify as Members. They advise the board on key matters like the grant model, join closed events, and will appoint board directors in the future.
Their rights are legally defined in the membership policy.
3Board Directors
The Board of Directors is our main governing body, appointing both the Executive Director for operational management and Advisors.
By design, all Directors must also be Members. The board is governed by the bylaws.
Team
Board of Directors
Konstantin Vinogradov
Founder and Managing Partner at Varion Ventures, investing in open source, AI, and infra software. Former General Partner at Runa Capital. Creator and maintainer of the ROSS Index (2020–2025), a quarterly data-driven index of open-source startups.
Amy Parker
VP, Major Gifts at the Signal Foundation. Former Deputy Executive Director at the OpenSSL Foundation and Director of the Wikipedia Endowment. Served as Director of Individual Giving at the Smithsonian and the New York Public Library.
Maxim Konovalov
Co-founder and former CTO at Nginx, the world's leading web server used by 400M+ websites, which was acquired by F5 Networks for ~$700M. Former VP Engineering at F5. Long-time contributor to FreeBSD.
Know someone who should help govern OSE? Anyone can suggest candidates for the board, including themselves.
Nominate a directorStaff & Advisors
Jonathan Starr
Former Program Manager at NumFOCUS, a nonprofit supporting scientific OSS such as Pandas. Co-founder of SciOS and The Institute of Open Science Practices, focusing on sustainable open science.
Vlad Miricioiu
Executive Director of the Software Stewardship Lab and Director of the Open Source Pledge. Core developer of thanks.dev, an OSS funding service. Helped build software used by the Gates Foundation to allocate $1B in healthcare funding.
Chad Whitacre
Former Head of Open Source at Sentry (used by 4M+ developers) and former leader of the Open Source Pledge, a cultural initiative to get companies to pay maintainers. Founded open source funding pioneer Gratipay (2012–2018).
Investment Strategy
Donations form a permanent principal that is never spent. Only investment income funds grants: we target a 5% annual spend rate, typical for US university endowments, and reinvest the rest after minimal operating costs.
Core Low-Risk Public Portfolio
All cash and other liquid donated assets go into a diversified, low-risk portfolio managed by an independent outsourced CIO, Infinite Giving, which specializes in US nonprofits. This strategy targets a 6–8% annual yield.
outsourced CIO 
Complementary Private Stock Donations
We accept private stock donations from tech companies, their founders and employees. The endowment model allows us to passively wait as long as needed for a liquidity event like M&A or IPO. When realized, proceeds from such stock can significantly boost the Endowment's returns.
Donate private stock →