The Pika Fellowship

80% of the web's most depended-upon packages are maintained without funding of any kind.

Open source software (OSS) powers the web. Thousands of different projects receive millions of downloads a month from individuals, startups, and Fortune 500 companies. While a few popular & highly-visible projects can raise millions of dollars, the rest of the OSS community goes without a single cent.

This is a fault of the direct sponsorship model. Project owners rarely have the resources, training, or interest needed to support long-term fundraising. As a result, sponsors donate to projects with no insight into how donation may be used. Meanwhile, maintainers lack the insight or incentives needed to properly distribute funds. Donations can sit unused for years.

What is The Pika Fellowship?

The Pika Fellowship is a sponsorship model that supports open source participation at scale.

The Pika Fellowship is a fully-funded, month-long rotational program that pairs new developers with open source maintainers in need of help. All participants are paid for their participation in the program.

Through the Fellowship, open source maintainers submit proposals outlining the work that they would like to see sponsored. Proposals are made public ahead of time so that donors and project participants have visibility into what is being funded.

The Pika Fellowship matches then matches each proposal with a vetted developer (Fellow) for a one-month rotation with the open source project. Fellows are embedded with the project, working directly with the project maintainers. Maintainers provide guidance and mentorship to the Fellow as they work through the original proposal.