Support Joomla!
Donations PDF Print E-mail
Written by Wilco Jansen   

In my previous post, I talked about lowering the barriers for contributors. So far the feedback has been pretty inspiring. In this blog post I want to talk about another way of contributing back to the project, and that is through donations. At Joomla! Day events, I am often asked about donations. People want to know how they can donate, how much annual donations are given, and what the project does with the donations. That's an easy question; the core team members get paid from all the donations...
Pie chart
Of course I am kidding. If you take a look at the amount of money donated, and the number of core team/OSM members we could surely not have a decent living .

Most people are surprised to learn that donations are so small. The total amount of donations over the past 12 months was around $13.500. These donations come from community members who build Joomla! Web sites and use the donations link. The project also receives donations from companies like PackT, GoDaddy, and Google. Such corporate contributions come from the Google Summer of Code program, the generosity of a Web host, and royalties shared from Joomla! book sales.

It is of interest where donations come from. The top six countries are presented in this graph, and we see that the United States and The Netherlands are by far the top donating countries. In fact, these two countries are responsible for a total of 65% of all donations we receive!

When we focus on these two countries, we see a difference in the total amount per contribution, and a clear difference in the frequency of the donations. The US had 79 donations, and the Dutch contributers only had 12. In the Netherlands, a company called Byte is sharing a percentage of their revenue they make of Joomla! back to the project, every donation is around $350. On average, the amount per donation is around $55 in the US. This is more than twice as high as the $25 donation, world-wide.

This year we see a similar pattern in the donations, but we see a noteworthy difference. Norway has entered the top-five in 2008. This is due to a donation of the Norwegian Joomla! Day of around $2.500 which is a really great gesture from a local community.

So, how do you help Joomla! with your donations? Your donations help support Joomla! Days, developer conferences, presentation materials, infrastructure and travel expenses, as well as other expenses that come up to develop and promote the project. As the project grows, it requires more money. Looking at the Joomla! Days (which we try to support with a small amount of money) the number has increased impressively. With this growth the need for more money is simply a logical conclusion.


Please read the "Donate to Joomla!" page on www.joomla.org and consider contributing to Joomla!, too. Thanks to each of you who have given financially to this project.
 

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28 Comments

  1. avatar Phil Taylor makes this comment

    Sat 24 May 2008 10:45:15 EDT

    If there were more transparency in how the donations were spent you would see a lot more donations! After false promises to publish this information made a long time ago, nothing has yet been published! If the community donate, then you should be accountable to show where that money has gone specifically. (Im not saying the community should be able to tell you how to spend it, but based on where you spend it they can decide if they donatet again!)

  2. avatar DavidAndrew makes this comment

    Sat 24 May 2008 13:32:39 EDT

    Wow! Just 13000? We should be ashamed of ourselves! I donate, also to Virtuemart, MisterEstate, sh404SEF and smaller extensions. And I'm Dutch, so I feel okay I suppose. But all of the users together just send in 13000? Thats really absurd! I am inspired by Byte, another Dutch company. I think its really important to Joomla! and Open Source that we, the company's earning money from this great project, donate! Starting this summer I will start donating a % of my profit or turn over to Joomla! on a regular basis. I really hope other company's world-wide will follow Byte's example!!!

  3. avatar David makes this comment

    Sat 24 May 2008 13:39:28 EDT

    Hi Phil, yes that is important, but I dont think it should be a reason why not to donate. The Joomla! core members don't know what every website is used for? And a donation is not "paying" for a service of some sort. People should donate because Joomla!is a great working CMS right now! Not because the know where the money is going to g eventually. My 2 cents.

  4. avatar Neri Valentin-Macias makes this comment

    Sat 24 May 2008 16:00:19 EDT

    Thank you for the information Wilco. I personally have a plan in place with my own consulting company of One for filtering donations down to support open source applications that I use in the web development process. A % of service fees are donated to open source projects utilized in providing the service. If my bread is being buttered by an open source project, I personally see it as unethical not to give back! I also ONLY purchase from commercial extension providers who donate to open source projects and follow the open source licensing standard by not closing their code.

  5. avatar Omar Ramos makes this comment

    Sat 24 May 2008 18:29:24 EDT

    I wrote a post on the Dev Forums earlier this week regarding the successful use Ron Paul has had with his US Presidential campaign partly due to the way it was presented on his site. There was a flash module that showed the goal amount for the period, the current amount of donations, with the names and locations of recent donors cycling through and updated about every 3 minutes. Never before had I seen a donation system that provided such instant feedback and it really helped everyone to feel as if they were making a significant contribution because the stats were updated automatically. I think if we were to create a module that could be used for this purpose it would not only be useful for the Joomla project in raising additional funds, but it would also help nonprofits and other organizations that rely on donations that are using Joomla. The title of the thread is "Ron Paul Flash Donation Script Clone" and it is located in the Joomla! 1.5.x_Dev Forum.

  6. avatar Wilco Jansen makes this comment

    Sat 24 May 2008 20:15:45 EDT

    @Phil - the purpose of my blog was to do just that - let the community know how their donations help the Joomla! project. @David and Neri - thank you both for your comments. It makes good sense for those whose income is generated from the communities efforts to help strengthen the project with a portion of those earnings. I hope other companies also see the benefits you have each well articulated.

  7. avatar Omar Ramos makes this comment

    Sun 25 May 2008 01:00:03 EDT

    Here is the direct link to the forum post I wrote which has additional details about my first comment Wilco, if it was something you thought might be a good idea: http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=231&t=293218 There is a screenshot available as well. Unfortunately, the script doesn't seem to be in place anymore on the Ron Paul site (only the donation page is still there), but it was very exciting while it was there. If you aren't familiar with the records the Ron Paul site broke this past year you can go to Digg.com and search for "ron paul donation" and you'll see some entries with additional details.

  8. avatar Elin Waring makes this comment

    Sun 25 May 2008 11:20:13 EDT

    @Omar, We are actually thinking along those lines already. :)

  9. avatar Franck makes this comment

    Sun 25 May 2008 17:12:29 EDT

    I guess that donations have not been important until now for the project. Other incomes' source have covered the basic needs of the project I am personally surprised to see that there is no active & visible fundraising activities in the project, although there is a nominee for that. The idea of Omar is a good one, and indeed the fundraising facilities of the US campaign candidates are worth a look.

  10. avatar Peter R makes this comment

    Sun 25 May 2008 20:41:04 EDT

    Before donating to ANYTHING I always chck to see where it is going and what it is used for. I don't donate to some large charities because they spend a very larege % of their income on administration. I did look at making a donation to Joomla but as I could not find anything, apart from this vague post, I wont be making a donation. I won't make a donation to anything without knowing where the money is going and what it will be used for. More importantly it's also not clear if Joomla even needs my donation. There is obvioulsy a huge income from google ads which is not mentioned. As a result I've decided not to donate to Joomla but instead to donate the money to a Burma Cyclone appeal.

  11. avatar Neri Valentin-Macias makes this comment

    Mon 26 May 2008 16:03:31 EDT

    @Peter R I think the comparison of Joomla! to a large charitable organization is incorrect and WAY out perspective. Joomla! is a FREE and OPEN application, a framework, a group of volunteer developers (Thank You Guys and Gals!), and a growing community; To which many non-profits, entrepreneurs, and developers are generating income from.

  12. avatar Elin makes this comment

    Mon 26 May 2008 20:11:44 EDT

    I just wanted to share an email exchange I had with a new user who sent a message to OSM Him: dear sir / madam, I am xxxx, I live here in xxxxxx, I would like to know if do I need to pay for the usage of joomla modules if I will be using it for selling my web designs. I mean, I can make a website using joomla but the design is 100% my original art work. If I need to pay, how much? Me: Joomla! is provided free of charge. Some third parties may charge you for their work, which is also fine, but the core of Joomla! is free. Him: WOW.. NICE ... thanks.. this is one of my designs xxxxxxx ,I will make donations soon. :)

  13. avatar Elin makes this comment

    Tue 27 May 2008 01:38:16 EDT

    A few people have asked how donations are used. Donations go straight into the regular budget along with all of our income from advertising, Summer of Code, Shop and other sources. No one takes a salary and we don't have a fundraising firm. We do have an accountant who does our taxes and a post office box, and we send the occasional overnight letter. Overall, administrative expenses are small. Everything else goes straight to developing, protecting and promoting the project. $13,000 is what it takes to support about 13 Joomla! Days all over the world, and it does not begin to cover hosting joomlacode.org. We deeply appreciate the voluntary financial support of our user community and Joomla! professionals from around the world.

  14. avatar unleash.it makes this comment

    Tue 27 May 2008 04:42:41 EDT

    If you like Joomla and want it to be around, and especially if you benefit from it, help and/or donate. That's the only way open source is going to work. It boggles my mind that anyone would use the excuse of not having a financial chart posted... especially if they are benefiting from the program. If Joomla was the Sierra Club and the donations were significant (like $millions), maybe than we should like to know that the money was being used wisely. But come on, $13,000? If they're using it to throw non-stop pizza parties, that's fine with me!

  15. avatar Omar Ramos makes this comment

    Tue 27 May 2008 23:33:34 EDT

    @Elin I just came back to check on this and I wanted to get some more detail about what you meant when you said you were "thinking along those lines already"? Has development of a similar module begun? If not, I'd like to officially start one :-). I think if we prepped the community and said hey, we're going to have one day where everyone and mcsmom will donate then we can have a great showing ;-). It might also be nice to brainstorm about how additional revenue could be put to good use in furthering the project :-).

  16. avatar Amy Stephen makes this comment

    Wed 28 May 2008 00:24:22 EDT

    Sincere thanks to the Norwegian Joomla! community for sharing $2,500 from your Joomla! Day event. I am just blown away by your generosity. It is worth mentioning that your single donation from *your* Joomla! Day event made up nearly 20% of the annual giving. Respect to Norway!

  17. avatar Lorenzo makes this comment

    Wed 28 May 2008 00:33:08 EDT

    I second Amy. I had the opportunity to meet the participants in Joomla!day Norway last year and some board members of their local association and they were all great people! It was very generous of them to donate so much money! Something to be inspired by.. Thanks all donators!

  18. avatar Elin makes this comment

    Thu 29 May 2008 05:25:29 EDT

    @Omar, We're moving to CiviCRM to manage donation record keeping, and I really want a way of displaying recent donors (if they wish) either in a module or in some other way. If you'd like to try to come up with something that would be great.

  19. avatar Donald Lobo makes this comment

    Fri 30 May 2008 00:43:06 EDT

    Adding this feature to show the last XXX 'public' donations is not too hard. here is one way to accomplish this in 2.0: a. Create and add a new boolean custom field called "show my name and donation amount on a public web site" (i.e. let the user opt in for this) b. write a simple php script to: 1. query the contribution, contact and contribution page table to retrive the last 'n' users who've donated to this page and who've opted to have their name shown. Return this as a JSON array 
    SELECT    c.first_name, c.last_name, o.total_amount
FROM      civicrm_contact c,
          civicrm_contribution o,
          civicrm_value_permission cv
WHERE     o.contribution_page_id = 1
  AND     o.contact_id = c.id
  AND     o.contribution_status_id = 1
  AND     cv.entity_id = c.id
  AND     cv.is_public = 1
ORDER BY  o.receive_date
LIMIT     0, 10;
    2. the widget takes the JSON array and does the needful lobo

  20. avatar Joseph LeBlanc makes this comment

    Fri 30 May 2008 13:28:06 EDT

    I think that setting a target amount for a specific time period would help us raise more money. For instance, we should list out what we want to accomplish over the span of July through January, estimate how much that costs, then have a campaign in June to raise that amount. Doing this would draw more attention to the donations (and would allow us to add one of those nifty progress bars to the site ;) ). Wikipedia does this every year for their donations and it seems to work. This would also give us an opportunity to offer sponsorships for higher levels of donations. There's definitely money out there that Joomla!-related businesses are willing to spend (as seen by recent Joomla! events). I also think that showing the latest donor would help, as others have suggested.

  21. avatar Joseph LeBlanc makes this comment

    Fri 30 May 2008 18:38:35 EDT

    We should do campaign-style fundraising for specific periods of time. For instance, list out the things we want to fund from July to January, tally up the costs, then raise the money in June. Wikipedia does this every year: they add a progress bar throughout the site and update it as funds come in. This is a good way of encouraging people to donate: there's a specific goal in mind that people can aim for. This also opens up the opportunity of having sponsorships for limited periods of time. Businesses would be able to donate money to be listed as a "Business Sponsor" with a link to their site. Everything would reset with the next cycle. The money for this is definitely out there (as seen by sponsorships of recent Joomla! events).

  22. avatar Todd makes this comment

    Sat 31 May 2008 04:21:58 EDT

    Has Open Source Matters gotten its non-profit status officially yet? I'd like to donate, but had been waiting until OSM was officially a non-profit so that I could get some tax savings as well here in the U.S.

  23. avatar Elin makes this comment

    Sat 31 May 2008 07:53:35 EDT

    @Todd, No we are still waiting for the IRS to make the determination. We are a non profit and always will be, but we are not yet a charity which is what you need in the US for contributions to be deductible.

  24. avatar Joseph LeBlanc makes this comment

    Sat 31 May 2008 18:14:26 EDT

    (sorry for the double post above, I kept getting a "your message is spam" alert)

  25. avatar Bart makes this comment

    Mon 02 Jun 2008 07:19:12 EDT

    on Joomfish I noted that the gigantic firm Danone uses Joomla... Perhaps it would be nice if companies that can afford a small contribution like that would donate a bit. Any donation from a company that size should be noticable... I do not see france on the pie... Perhaps it would be great to identify the big organizations and highlight which have donated. A list like that would encourage others to use it but perhaps the community can also encourage them to support the project

  26. avatar Gruus @ Byte makes this comment

    Mon 09 Jun 2008 15:22:24 EDT

    Nice that this is issue is discussed! With Byte we regulary donate to open source initiatives and we contribute a little to stuff we use (Apache, PHP, NFS, MySQL), mostly bugreports and suggested solutions. But we think a small donation per user (like we do with 10 euro per site) is a very easy way to kick up funds for the Joomla guys. Of course have your customer/end user pay this (at Byte we pay it ;)), on a budget for a website 10 euros extra is nothing. Please ask your customer (the people you make the site for) if you can donate 10 or 20 euros and include that in the work you do. And of course, as a webdesigner/developer: donate in work/hours/sweat/tears/blood! :) I've included the link to the article on our website. Please have your say @ support@byte.nl. Greetz! Gruus @ Byte.

  27. avatar Gerhard makes this comment

    Thu 12 Jun 2008 17:55:07 EDT

    What the....??? Only $13k?? I think we could do more for the community... Maybe some of the following could be implemented: 1.) Encourage a "Donation Competition" between companies who publish commercial products on the Joomla Extensions site. Publish this info for all to see. That way we, as buyers, can make an informed decision if we want to support a vendor. 2.) When viewing the list of Extensions, maybe we can put an "OSM Supporter" logo next to extensions IF the company donates a percentage to Joomla! for each sale? OR commercial products have to pay a listing fee to publish extensions on Joomla! This can be based on a fixed percentage of the total price perhaps? Personally, I will ensure to start donating a percentage of all my Joomla services to the project from now on!

  28. avatar linjoe makes this comment

    Tue 24 Jun 2008 17:51:31 EDT

    and dutchmans are gredy ? :S I dont see it ! lin

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