Leverage Drupal Innovation Fund on Open Collective

gusaus → credited alexmoreno → .

gusaus → credited hestenet → .

Updated to align with the goal of creating a dedicated innovation fund.

Updating title to reflect primary goal/task of creating a fund on Open Collective

• Removed [Proposal] prefix in title.
• Changed component to Proposed Plan.
• Changed status to RTBC.

This task was created before the Innovation Fund was announced as a way to fund contributions to Starshot → (including the session Dries led on Participation, Funding, and Governance). While we have been talking about creating/leveraging an Open Collective Fund for other use cases, Starshot creates the need and opportunity to do the following:

- Create a Drupal Innovation Fund on Open Collective (see https://blog.opencollective.com/funds-for-open-source/)
- Create a Starshot project on https://opencollective.com/drupal (see #3377002: Leverage top-level Drupal collective (Open Collective) → )

By doing the following the Drupal Association could continue to leverage their current fundraising and crediting system as funds could be allocated (to the Fund on Open Collective) via bank transfer or some other way. By using Open Source Collective as fiscal host/sponsor, the DA would 'not' be solely responsible for allocating funds to related projects and initiatives (and their contributors). For example, if we set up 'projects' for Starshot, Automatic Updates, Project Browser, Recipes, etc on https://opencollective.com/drupal funds could be allocated from the Drupal Innovation Fund to Starshot and/or any of the related projects via collective to collective transfer.

If we created projects on the Fund for each use case (Starshot, Innovation Funding rounds (see #3376257: Innovation Funding Rounds: Leveraging Democratic Funding → ), the DA would have even more control and flexibility in terms of allocating funds.

By leveraging, Open Source Collective as the fiscal sponsor for both the Fund and Drupal collective (OSC is currently the fiscal sponsor for https://opencollective.com/drupal), we could augment the DA's current system/capacity by providing a wide range of additional services and benefits for contributors (including potential full-time employment).

I think Starshot is a type of project which requires a lot of time and dedication from a lot of people, more than any theoretical fund could fund, and community is already mobilized for this effort. Volunteering on Starshot I think its not the time focus on money or spend additional resources on additional bureaucracy and financing layer on top of it, there is only 204 days left for the deadline.

To make things clear, financing questions are important to solve, just I guess starshot is out of scope for this. Starshot is strategic initiative which already receives a lot of mobilization, volunteering and a lot of investment (by companies financing their employees).

While I think "Innovation ideas" project is to strengthen many community initiatives which don't receive as much support, but important to help where strategic initiatives may not always cover.

I think Starshot is a type of project which requires a lot of time and dedication from a lot of people, more than any theoretical fund could fund, and community is already mobilized for this effort.

A Drupal Innovation Fund isn't theoretical. It's something Dries mentioned multiple times during this Starshot session Participation, Funding, and Governance.

Neither is an Open Collective Fund (https://docs.opencollective.com/help/financial-contributors/organization...). It's a mechanism that Open Collective has provided for several years and something the Drupal Association (specifically @hestenet) has been exploring over the past year.

I should watch. I wonder who will be financiers, if Drupal organizations are already stretched simply by funding their own workers while funding others was never popular.

The Drupal Association partner program webinar (for their partners) earlier this week ran through the new options to (a) fund people at the partners and/or (b) through the DA's innovation fund and/or (c) through DA employing people to work on Starshot. The last two depending on the amount of money the partner can contribute. The last two depending on the amount of money the partner can contribute. I think Dries will cover those tomorrow and the DA may publish more details of that later too.

@gábor-hojtsy provided some additional context (around funding Starshot) a couple weeks ago in Slack but I'm not sure what's been discussed or decided since.

Considering there's a component set up for Funding, it seems like https://www.drupal.org/project/issues/starshot → would be a good place to centralize (plans and processes to funding Starshot).

@gusaus It is my understanding that the DA has already established a funding mechanism. Also, it appears that the new Fundraising Manager (staff) role's purpose is to manage fundraising activities. Once filled, it may make sense to discuss with that person to see if they have thoughts around leveraging Open Collective.

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