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Self-serve model for funding Node.js work #1747
Description
@nodejs/tsc I'm sharing this concrete proposal to further address any concerns regarding #1723 (comment) before moving forward with implementation.
Problem statement
Companies and individuals want to fund Node.js work. Some Node.js maintainers are open to receiving funding for their contributions. How can we provide a self-serve way for funders to connect with those maintainers?
My proposal
Host a directory of maintainers and their areas of interest and expertise in an easily discoverable place on the Node.js website.
Add a new "Funding" item to the headers list in https://nodejs.org. It would be a link to a new page with contents:
Funding Node.js
This page outlines how you can fund the project and its maintainers.
1. Directed funding for OpenJS Foundation Member
Organizations can become OpenJS Foundation Members and use directed funding to support the project. To learn more about Project Directed Funding, visit https://openjsf.org/projects.
2. Donate via GitHub or Open Collective
The project accepts funding via:
Funds are to be used for specific efforts as decided by the Node.js Technical Steering Committee, including:
- Security lead
- CI stability improvements
- Project health and collaboration
For more details, see Node.js Funding Sources.
3. Fund individual contributors
The following directory lists maintainers who are open to receiving funding:
(Link to a file in https://github.com/nodejs/admin which would contain this directory)
| Name | Contact | Areas of interest and expertise |
|---|---|---|
| Jane Doe | jane.doe@gmail.com | Modules, Website |
| John Doe | john.doe@gmail.com | HTTP, Async hooks |
Companies and individuals may connect directly with maintainers. The Node.js project does not oversee these engagements and is not responsible for any disputes or outcomes.
Activity
avivkeller commentedon Jun 5, 2025
FYI @nodejs/nodejs-website
mcollina commentedon Jun 5, 2025
As a nonprofit organization, I don't think this is viable as is with our current policies and programs and it needs a few tweaks:
Note that the board has not forgotten about this and we will be implementing a partner program for companies to be listed as implementation partners.
RaisinTen commentedon Jun 6, 2025
I've updated it to address points 1 and 2.
Regarding point 3, not listing anyone but pointing to the collaborators list has some limitations that might make it less effective for funders and maintainers:
That's why I thought a separate, opt-in directory, limited to those open to receiving funding and including info about their areas of interest and expertise, on the Node.js website makes more sense. Any thoughts?
mcollina commentedon Jun 11, 2025
This was discussed in the TSC meeting and we agreed to include the list in the Admin repository.
RaisinTen commentedon Jul 7, 2025
I have opened a PR to create the list in the admin repo nodejs/admin#981
jasnell commentedon Jul 7, 2025
We already allow individual contributors to display a "Sponsor Me" link by their name in the nodejs/node readme. How would this be any different / better? I'm -1 on adding something beyond that.
RaisinTen commentedon Jul 8, 2025
@jasnell the status quo has these limitations:
Having an easily accessible Funding page on the Node.js website and adding a link to this separate opt-in directory, with those who are open to receiving funding and including info about their areas of interest and expertise would overcome these limitations. That's why I felt it would be better.
jasnell commentedon Jul 8, 2025
I don't find any of these "limitations" convincing and I'm still -1.
I'm not sure how the nodejs/node readme counts as not being easily discoverable? https://github.com/nodejs/node#collaborators ... If anything, some markdown file in the more obscure nodejs/admin is even less discoverable.
For comparison, the nodejs/admin repo receives around 456 unique visitors, while the nodejs/node repo receives around 52,242 unique visitors. It's far more likely that folks will see the nodejs/node readme than it is this other file in the admin repo.
That can be easily listed on the target of the "Sponsor Me" link ... for instance, here is @aduh95's https://github.com/sponsors/aduh95 ... this seems far better and far more expressive, not to mention being expressly designed for this purpose:
This is a more general problem that is not specific to sponsoring, and this proposal does not improve the visibility for those other kinds of maintainers.
Which is why adding a "Sponsor Me" link is optional.
RaisinTen commentedon Jul 9, 2025
@jasnell
The key here is to drive traffic from the Node.js website. This approach doesn't depend on the existing traffic to individual repos. Instead, a new Funding page will be added to the Node.js site, as outlined at the top, and it would provide a link to this directory. This makes it significantly easier for potential funders to discover the relevant information.
Including areas of interest and expertise in this directory has no downside. If someone wants to fund a specific type of work, they won't have to browse every profile manually. They can quickly narrow down their search to people who mention the relevant categories.
Why wouldn't this proposal improve visibility for those other kinds of maintainers?
AugustinMauroy commentedon Jul 13, 2025
IMO displaying these people on website is good idea. But keeping them on readme.
Technical solution for that:
RaisinTen commentedon Jul 14, 2025
The marketing team at the foundation is adamant about not making the list a part of the Node.js website. Check out the recording from the 34:45 mark: https://www.youtube.com/live/xqs7qlmnFsE?si=z4IyzE2AAj_SKmNr&t=2085
ruyadorno commentedon Jul 14, 2025
@RaisinTen I'm trying to follow the conversation here but I was very confused by this last comment as listening to the record it sounds like @mcollina is stating the opposite, quoting from the video:
Maybe there's some extra context I'm missing here?
ovflowd commentedon Jul 14, 2025
@RaisinTen you're aware there's already an issue open on nodejs/nodejs.org#7909, right?
4 remaining items
panva commentedon Jul 18, 2025
@jasnell I had an expectation that the link would do nothing. It did nothing.
marco-ippolito commentedon Jul 18, 2025
No sponsors for me either :-(
RaisinTen commentedon Jul 19, 2025
The status quo has not been effective for me either.
mcollina commentedon Jul 19, 2025
My sponsors have essentially be stable as well, those links are not effective.
AugustinMauroy commentedon Jul 19, 2025
That makes sense to me. Because, in my opinion, the readme file is not the place I would look to find sponsors. I think a dedicated page with a list of contributors/collaborators and what they have accomplished would be more impactful.
ovflowd commentedon Jul 19, 2025
That's also ineffective.
RaisinTen commentedon Jul 19, 2025
We can't be sure of that without giving it a try.
ovflowd commentedon Jul 19, 2025
I disagree, if we go with that sort of decision making process, we might as well just do random things without any direction in sight.
I don't think it's worth the time and resources, we should be seeking processes that have been proved to work, at least for this specific vector. Sure, bringing new ideas is important, but I doubt doing a manual list will help at all, or at least that's what my experience and gut feeling tells me.
I'd much rather improve the status quo of sponsoring node as a whole and getting us funded and having said funds disbursed to people that have been doing critical work.
jasnell commentedon Jul 19, 2025
I think the key challenge here, regardless of which repo we might put the list is that potential sponsors aren't really likely to be digging through markdown files in a github repo to find individuals to sponsor. It's also going to be quite a burden to manually keep the list up to date and even ensure that all of our Collaborators who want sponsorship have equal visibility.
I would note that it is possible to use the Github graphql API to see if any particular github user has a sponsor profile. It should also be possible to use the API to query the list of all members of the organization. So I wonder if there's a different way we can approach this entirely... It would be interesting, I think, to build a new section of the nodejs.org website that is effectively a "Contributor Directory" that uses the Github API to generate an up-to-date directory of every member of the
nodejsgithub organization with links to their github profiles and, if they have one, a link to their sponsor pages.For this page:
The key idea is that the page itself is not really focused / limited to sponsorship, per se, but would serve as a directory of everyone in the project -- not just people with a commit bit in the main repo, but all members who have chosen to make their association with the project public.
It would likely take a bit of effort to create such a directory page but I think it would more than likely be far more visible and effective than a manually edited markdown file buried in some arbitrary location in some repo.
RaisinTen commentedon Jul 20, 2025
That would really improve the visibility of the contributors.
Can you expand on point 3? What would the surfaced info be like in practice?
jasnell commentedon Jul 21, 2025
I don't know yet. We'd need someone to dig in and investigate this idea further. We can surface details from each contributors public profiles tho... really anything we can access via the API.
ljharb commentedon Jul 21, 2025
Github Sponsor information is readily available in the API for individuals; for projects, there's the
fundingfield and FUNDING.yml, but it's probably overly complex to focus on "projects" here, since it's about collaborators.joyeecheung commentedon May 13, 2026
It doesn't look like there are any recent updates in this issue. Removing the tsc-agenda label until we have more updates to avoid piling items that won't receive discussions in the agenda.