# Astro Project Funding

_Last Updated: 08-17-2021_

## 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.

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

Below is a (non-exhaustive) list of how we plan to distribute raised funds:

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

**Maintainers, Core Maintainers, and Project Stewards are not currently eligible to receive funds from the open collective.** One day, we hope to have enough money to begin experimenting with paying contributors for their work, [following in Eslint's footsteps.](https://eslint.org/blog/2020/10/year-paying-contributors-review)