May I ask what it’s the right share of net worth one should donate to OSS? And what’s this share in your personal case?
I am not a high net worth individual. With a 20 year career as an IC in the tech industry though, I'm quite comfortably middle class. But even I have donated $10k to charity in a single year many times. Many tech companies offer charity gift-matching programs. I take full advantage of those by having a donor advised fund so I can capture the full gift match amount every year and then disburse those funds as desired. When I was briefly at Microsoft, they had an oddly generous gift match of up to $15k per year. I literally put up $15k of my own money each year to capture that $30k/year into a charity account for several years.
That's why I feel like I can comment critically on this. I'm a regular dude who grew up dirt-poor and ended up modestly successful in life and even I can manage to donate amounts of 10's of thousands annually.
Compared to the much more successful executive, CEO, founder class who you mentioned were among your donors. To the kind who own houses in the Los Altos hills worth 10 million plus, those numbers seem kind of paltry.
I'm not trying to take away from the success of your organization and its mission. I congratulate you on your fundraising efforts and I know you can't afford to be critical of your donors lest those donors sour on you. But truly, it does strike me how some of the wealthiest among us, who have benefited the most from these common goods, can give so little.
We are not building yet another HNWI-focused nonprofit, but a grassroots community endowment. It targets a donor like you – a regular tech industry worker who can support things they truly care about with a $1-100k donation. I think many developers love open source, don't they?
We intentionally targeted launching the endowment with a $0.5-1m initial size and many donors because:
1) It is not attractive for regular donors to support a project that is heavily funded by HNWIs. Let's say if I were able to donate to the Gates Foundation, it would be like peeing in the ocean and wouldn't matter. However, I am eager to support projects with peers among donors because it makes a difference. And that's the way to make OSE scalable and outlive all its founders.
2) It is important to maintain high decentralization of funding, which enables good community governance and accountability. Having a few outsized donors at the start kills it. Our donor Herfindahl–Hirschman index is ~1800 now.
3) As a VC (maybe a bit old school), I think that it is responsible to limit funding size at very early stages and grow it later together with achieved milestones and decreasing risks. It helps to build more efficient organizations.
Just take a look at https://endowment.dev/community - we obviously targeted notable founders at the start, but now it is a healthy mix with many everyday developers. You're welcome to join them.
Of course, OSE will look for large donations. But the goal is to raise them in balance with growing a community of smaller donors, maintaining decentralization and scalability.
