Automattic always has its eyes on the big fish — hosting companies (rightfully so), well-known plugin builders. They contribute by paying employees or freelancers who work on WordPress core. Many even have their own community managers to keep things running.
But how does a small fish — like me — make a financial contribution to WordPress? Short answer: you can’t officially.
The WordPress Foundation is a separate thing entirely. I contribute $50 a year to it, though I’ve been trying to cancel for two years straight since Matt Mullenweg’s little crusade. Emails go unanswered. Says enough, really. Fine, keep the $50. I’ll wait until my card expires in 2028. 🤷 Or just maybe, i enter my new creditcard details. Let’s see.
€1,000 a year
My company Woofers is doing well, so I budget between €700 – €1,000 a year for good causes. Last year that went to the WordPress Community Collective, where I ended up being the highest individual contributor. Not bragging — I just genuinely want to give back, cause i can’t do it with time as i’m too busy.
In theory i can sponsor individual contributors directly. But does that really move the needle for me or for them? I don’t have a month wage to spent, right. And sometimes i do give money to individuals, but it’s more a appreciate gesture.
It’s not a structural solution and it ignores the scalability of funding.
And also: i don’t want to pick individuals contributors either myself as i don’t have time to do any follow-up or awkward feeling the budget is well spend or not.
Beyond Five for the Future, what about a simple 2% on profit?
We all know 5% for the future, and it’s used for time and money. For a small company like me, 5% “money” is a hurdle. I think it has better chance when promoting it on 2%: a 2% on profit.
An example of a regular small fish in the ecosystem.
Revenue €150K, profit €30K — two or three percent lands you between €600 and €1,000 a year. Not huge, but real money.
Now scale it up. WordPress events draws around 50,000 visitors a year — mostly people who make their living because of WordPress. If 10% contributed €1,000 each, you’re suddenly looking at €10,000,000.
Suddenly that school of small fish looks a lot more interesting than the few big fishes you’re endlessly trying to sweet-talk. 🐟
And such kind of funding is what this is all about: supported by the community.
The question is then: to who should we pay?
How can this be fixed?
Well, does every company (like Kinsta, Bluehost, Godaddy) really need its own community manager and financial account doing the same thing? If the ecosystem insists on keeping this model, why can’t the big fish pool resources go into one shared pot — one that small fish can actually contribute financially to as well?
And i know obviously money creates other sensitive challenges, cause not everyone can be funded. That’s unrealistic. But wining over and over that the WordPress project needs to have more funding without using all opportunities is also not an option. Bigger companies can fund directly and they should so. But smaller ones don’t have many options to make a combined impact.
Mixed side note:
I’ve had mixed feelings about publishing this article. Money is great, but it can’t be the main driver for working on a project. When money gets involved, so do emotions and ego. And who gets to decide who receives funding?
My biggest concern is for those niche specialists and idealists. Some contributors are so passionate about their craft that they lose themselves in it completely — even losing track of time. If they receive funding for impactful work, they’ll see it as a gesture of respect and recognition, not just a paycheck. Because honestly, some specialized contributors could earn far more in the private sector than in open source.
Those are the contributors I had in mind when I wrote this article. And everyone who reads this and is actively involved in the ecosystem knows at least one person like that.
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