# Astro Project Funding

_Last Updated: 03-30-2023_

## Raising Funds

Astro is an MIT licensed open source project and completely free to use. However, the amount of effort needed to maintain and develop new features for Astro is not sustainable without proper financial backing. We need your help to achieve this.

Learn more about sponsorship on our [Open Collective.](https://opencollective.com/astrodotbuild).

### Why Open Collective?

- **Full Transparency.** Everyone gets to see where money is coming from and where it's going.
- **Individual and Corporate Sponsors.** Open Collective makes it easy for both individuals and companies to sponsor open source projects.
- **Potential Tax Benefits.** Because funds are paid to the Open Source Collective, a 501(c)(6) organization in the U.S., there may be tax benefits for some donors (please check with your accountant).
- **Automatic Invoicing.** For corporate sponsors, Open Collective automatically generates and sends invoices for tracking purposes.
- **Open Participation.** Anyone can request reimbursement for funds spent helping the Astro project and Astro can pay out to anyone.

_List borrowed from [ESLint: "Funding ESLint's Future."](https://eslint.org/blog/2019/02/funding-eslint-future)_

## Distributing Funds

100% of money raised is invested back into the community. Every dollar spent **must** support and/or improve Astro in some way. For example:

- **Swag!** Creating stickers, t-shirts, etc. for sponsors and community members.
- **Improve documentation.**
- **Improve translations.**
- **Improve website.**
- **User research.**
- **Supporting contributors.**
- **Sponsoring conferences.**
- **Sponsoring community members to represent Astro at meetups, conferences, etc.**
- **Dedicated support for GitHub, Discord, Stack Overflow, etc.**

See all past expenses on our [Open Collective.](https://opencollective.com/astrodotbuild)

### Eligibility

**Employees, contractors, and consultants of The Astro Technology Company are not eligible to receive funds from Open Collective.** These funds exist solely to serve the larger Astro open-source community.

### Core Maintainer Stipend

A monthly stipend of up to $1000 per calendar month is available to [eligible](#eligibility) core maintainers. Any time spent improving or supporting the project in some way counts towards this stipend: writing code, writing documentation, triaging issues, offering support in our Discord server, attending meetings (and meetups) on behalf of Astro, contributing to our upstream dependencies, and so on.

Right now, the stipend is calculated per hour at $50 per hour contributed, with a maximum of $1000 each month. These numbers may shift as our funding and team size change over time.

To claim, file an expense on our [Open Collective.](https://opencollective.com/astrodotbuild) with the title: `Core Maintainer Stipend - $MONTH $YEAR`. Include an invoice summarizing the hours worked during the month, and a detailed breakdown of how those hours were spent. You can record and track these hours yourself as you go, but a time-tracker that can auto-generate the required breakdown for you is recommended.