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Thank you Sponsors!

My sponsors

All sponsors will be listed here

Monthly contribution time

20 hours/month since August 2024

Themeisle
(+ my blog post)

1 hour/month since Sept. 2024

Jens De Beule

One time

You?

What

There are two ways to sponsor, either with an ongoing sponsorship for my contribution time to the WordPress project, or with a one time sponsorship to cover contribution related costs such as my travel costs for being an event organiser at WordCamp Europe.

(There is a third way, more commercial, to sponsor WPMondo, one of my professional project, as an advertisement).

You can sponsor me directly via Bank transfer or via my Stripe account, contact me and I will issue an invoice with my banking details. So I’ll access the money in a few days.

The other possibility is to process sponsorship payments via GitHub. The pros are that it is a trusted and traceable way to sponsor and that most of the WordPress contribution is done on GitHub. The money is processed from GitHub to my bank account, via Stripe. If necessary, I can issue an invoice as well. The big drawback for me is that payouts are processed after several weeks.

In both cases, a small part of the received money is spent on Geneva social taxes for independant contractors, and on income taxes (Federal, Cantonal in Geneva, and municipal in Versoix).

Why not before? And why now?

Why didn’t I choose to be sponsored before? And why it is important to support contributors to the WordPress project. Read the related blog post about sponsorship, published on 27 July 2024.

Why

WordPress powers 43% of the web and needs contributors! We are open source! We have to set example and have thriving contributors who do not give up for financial reasons. The whole project also needs people besides developers, for a lot of other tasks!

My contributions

I dedicate a large amount of hours to WordPress (it rose to about 50% of my time since August 2023), I contribute in a lot of different ways:

  • Event organiser: Flagship WordCamp Europe, local and regional WordCamp events, local monthly Meetups.
  • Event supporter (aka “mentor”): to support other organisers to create successful events.
  • Contributor Mentorship Program and Contributor Onboarding: I take part in cohorts and planning. They are essential programs to gain new contributors for the WordPress project.
  • GatherPress: to be integrated in the WordPress Community (move our meetings management from proprietary to open source).
  • BuddyPress – bbPress: organisation of Contributor Day focused on those WordPress’ sister projects (TBA for Autumn 2024)
  • More generally on the Community Team: meetings, ideas, proposals, Meetup groups reactivation program, etc.

Win-win for sponsors

  • Recurring (sponsoring > 20 hours/month = $1000/month): you will be listed here at the top of this Sponsor page and on the Five for the Future program, and mentioned when I introduce myself “sponsored by” on WordPress related meetings (maximum 4 sponsors).
  • Recurring (sponsoring < 20 hours/month): you will be listed on my Sponsor page and on the Five for the Future program.
  • One time: you will be listed on my Sponsor page for supporting me.
  • All: blog post about you and shoutout on Social media.

Shared values

As in all of my contribution and professional projects, I want to help bring content to people in their language and culture, there I find DEIB and Sustainability essential for thriving contributors from all horizons and walks of life, especially underrepresented and people who face difficulties contributing. We need all the different perspectives and not be a project run by privileged people only.

Furthermore, it is important for me to share values with my sponsors and I prefer to be sponsored by companies I trust and whose values or vision I share. The best is to contact me first.

Examples

  • It would be strange to be sponsored by a page builder company while I’m only using and promoting the Block editor.
  • Values of inclusivity must run in your company.
  • I do not like shady marketing tactics.

Contribution Time – ongoing

The roughly 20 hours of contribution per week (about 80 per month) represent time I do not work on my professional projects. Bringing value by contributing to WordPress needs to be economically sustainable for me. And I bring value to WordPress! I know sponsors prefer developers but we all agree that other contributions are essential too, right?

I list an hour to be $50 (but this can be discussed and aligned to what other sponsored contributors usually get), beacuse with the exchange rate it will bring me CHF 44 (conversion rate July 2024), and taking into account social and income tax, this will bring the amount even lower. It’s way less than my professional hourly rate but this is my way of giving back to WordPress as well. It is equivalent to a lower-range salary in my area.

I’ll list all my contributions with time spent in my Contribution Board (starting August 2024, and trying to fill back all old contributions).

One time

WordCamp Europe 2024

I paid around $1850 (EUR 1700) to be a co-organiser of WordCamp Europe 2024, as we had 2 pre-event venue visits and none of our travel and accommodation costs are covered. If you want to help me recover part or all of what it did cost me, consider sponsoring (fully or partly) the one-time WCEU cost. Edit in September: The total of EUR 1700 have now been covered by Polylang with a one-time sponsorship, thank you so much Polylang ❤️

WordCamp Europe 2025

Let’s discuss!