Sustain Podcast – Requests for Funding!
Published on June 5, 2025 by Richard Littauer
Hey all,
After many years of running the Sustain Podcasts - either the main podcast, or our design podcast - we are now looking for funding to continue the show. Sustain has operated without ads for its entire existence, and while we would like to keep that up, we're open to suggestions. We've reached over a hundred thousand listeners in our tenure, and I know we've had a major impact on the ecosystem as a whole.
We've set up tiers for funders to pay for one, 4, or 20 podcasts on our Contribute Page: https://opencollective.com/sustainoss.
What does it take to make a podcast? Good question!
- Editing costs us around $159. This is what makes the Podcast good. Paul has been doing our editing for years, and I can't imagine the podcast without him.
- Beyond that, our Fireside hosting platform costs $59 a month, as we host multiple podcasts. Over the next month, we'll be cleaning out some of these older podcasts and retiring them to cut this down.
- Mailgun costs us $35.00 a month for our aliases.
- Zoom costs us $40 a month for our storage, and then $169 or so for a yearly subscription. This is how we record our podcasts. We would love to use open tools, but this is by far and away the best tool we have found for accurately recording podcasts with many guests at scale. We have also used BBB, once, for one guest who refused to use Zoom. Fair enough!
- Mailchimp costs around $26 a month, and we need to use that more.
- Tina, our admin editor, charged somewhere between $50-$100 a month for helping us put all of this online.
- I (Richard) and the other hosts do not make money or charge for doing the podcasts. I have at some points in the distant past - pre-Covid, I think - but I have not since at least 2021.
All told, that's around $250 per podcast per month. You can, of course, see all of our expenses here: https://opencollective.com/sustainoss/expenses. This is cheap. But it is not free.
If you're interested in future Sustain podcast episodes, and if you have suggestions on where we might be able to procure funding, get in touch. If you'd like to talk about funding us directly, email [email protected].
Thanks for all of the wonderful conversations we've had so far.
Yours,
Richard Littauer and the Sustain team
After many years of running the Sustain Podcasts - either the main podcast, or our design podcast - we are now looking for funding to continue the show. Sustain has operated without ads for its entire existence, and while we would like to keep that up, we're open to suggestions. We've reached over a hundred thousand listeners in our tenure, and I know we've had a major impact on the ecosystem as a whole.
We've set up tiers for funders to pay for one, 4, or 20 podcasts on our Contribute Page: https://opencollective.com/sustainoss.
What does it take to make a podcast? Good question!
- Editing costs us around $159. This is what makes the Podcast good. Paul has been doing our editing for years, and I can't imagine the podcast without him.
- Beyond that, our Fireside hosting platform costs $59 a month, as we host multiple podcasts. Over the next month, we'll be cleaning out some of these older podcasts and retiring them to cut this down.
- Mailgun costs us $35.00 a month for our aliases.
- Zoom costs us $40 a month for our storage, and then $169 or so for a yearly subscription. This is how we record our podcasts. We would love to use open tools, but this is by far and away the best tool we have found for accurately recording podcasts with many guests at scale. We have also used BBB, once, for one guest who refused to use Zoom. Fair enough!
- Mailchimp costs around $26 a month, and we need to use that more.
- Tina, our admin editor, charged somewhere between $50-$100 a month for helping us put all of this online.
- I (Richard) and the other hosts do not make money or charge for doing the podcasts. I have at some points in the distant past - pre-Covid, I think - but I have not since at least 2021.
All told, that's around $250 per podcast per month. You can, of course, see all of our expenses here: https://opencollective.com/sustainoss/expenses. This is cheap. But it is not free.
If you're interested in future Sustain podcast episodes, and if you have suggestions on where we might be able to procure funding, get in touch. If you'd like to talk about funding us directly, email [email protected].
Thanks for all of the wonderful conversations we've had so far.
Yours,
Richard Littauer and the Sustain team