$50 Million Raised for Open Source
This month, we're celebrating a significant milestone in our organisation's history: reaching $50m in contributions, accepted on behalf of our member projects. Last year Open Source Collective received $12.6m, up 20% on 2023.

Meanwhile, we paid $9.7m in expenses, the vast majority of which was paying for maintainer and contributor time. That we're paying 85% of funds received in a given year makes us immensely proud, having set this as one of our three strategic goals back in 2022.

👀 Explore our data

Ecosystem Funds: A New Way To Support Critical Open Source Software
One month ago last week, we launched Ecosystem Funds, designed to support hundreds of open source ecosystems focused on a language, framework, or specific technology.

Launched with a $75k donation from Sentry, Ecosystem Funds is a collaboration with ecosyste.ms a free service designed to help developers, researchers and policymakers to identify, secure, and sustain open source software.

Ecosystem Funds is designed simplify the process of funding your open source dependencies, reducing a laborious audit of your software to a simple question 'what key open source technologies do you depend upon?'.

📙 Find out more about Ecosystem Funds

Virtual Cards
We're aware of an issue with the remaining virtual cards, where some cards are not renewing as expected. After investigating, we've confirmed this is a known bug within Stripe. Our team will continue to monitor this issue, and once the bug is resolved, we'll provide an update to collectives with active cards.

This issue is part of a larger ongoing challenge with Stripe virtual cards. As you may recall, Stripe requested that we stop issuing virtual cards to hosted collectives. Our team has recently reached out to Stripe to revisit this conversation. 

If this effort doesn't lead to a solution, we will explore other options with an already-identified alternative vendor. While offering virtual cards to projects through a fiscal hosting model involves some complexities, we're committed to advocating for a virtual card solution that supports our hosted collectives and makes purchasing project necessities as simple as possible.

Upcoming Conferences: FOSDEM and FOSS Backstage
FOSDEM is just around the corner, happening this February in Brussels! As part of the event, OSC's Ben and Ecosyste.ms’ Andrew will present a talk titled "Open source funding: you’re doing it wrong." If you’re attending FOSDEM, we’d love for you to join us!

Also coming up in March in Berlin is FOSS Backstage, a conference about the non-coding aspects of open source, which OSC is proud to support. This year, the entire OSC team will be attending in person. Please stop by our booth and say 'hi'; we're excited to meet you and hear your thoughts on how OSC can support your projects in 2025!

We'd love to connect with you there if you plan to attend either conference! Let us know if you'll be there so we can arrange a meetup. You can always connect with us on Discord (here) or drop us an email at [email protected]. 

Let us pay for your ticket to the conference.
As a reminder, we offer assistance to maintainers in attending non-technical conferences! We recognize the value of gaining leadership and project management skills beyond the technical sphere. We’re happy to help cover the cost of conference admission for hosted collectives with limited budgets to ensure maintainers have access to valuable growth opportunities.

 
Additionally, last year, we expanded our support to include conference organizers. Our updated policy outlines how we can provide financial and promotional support for open source conferences. We prioritize smaller events that align with OSC’s mission of promoting sustainability, inclusivity, and education within open source. Event organizers interested in sponsorship or promotional support can reach out with event details and funding needs.
 
Learn more about our policy here: https://docs.oscollective.org/what-we-offer/grants-for-conference-attendance

Welcome New Collectives!
Last month, we welcomed 13 new collectives to the OSC community! A big welcome to:
Catalog, ExpressoTS, Galsen DEV, Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) Wallet, jQuery, LocalizeLimbusCompany, Metron Comic Book Database, Open World Holidays Framework, Stacks, Superfast, teal.fm, Vue Number Format, and vue-styled-components!

That’s all for now! We hope your 2025 is off to a great start. Here’s to an excellent year ahead!