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Ask HN: Open-source maintainers, how do you search for sponsors?

2 points by 255kb ↗ HN
I'm an open-source maintainer of a moderately popular developer tool. While I got sponsors from time to time, I would like to find more to sustain myself and dedicate more time to the project. I tried to contact companies sponsoring other open-source projects through Twitter or by email but got no response most of the time. I don't expect instant success, and I know that I am pretty average when it comes to marketing/sales. But still, I would be curious to hear from other open-source maintainers and their strategies, if any.

4 comments

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helsinkiandrew
I'm not an open-source maintainer but isn't the best bet your current users?

Ask developers (mailing list/README in version control/message on startup etc) to see if they or their company can sponsor. And make it easy for them to give money.

255kb
Thank you for the advice.

I think this is mostly covered already with an explanation and call to action in each repo readme, release changelog, etc. I'm also using GitHub Sponsors, which should be simple enough, I guess.

verdverm
what about building enterprise features some of the companies on the website would buy?
255kb
Yes, good suggestion, I recently started with this. Hope some Enterprise users will be interested.