A new perspective on fundraising

The FOSDEM conference is well known in the free and open source software community for its developer rooms (devrooms) where teams can meet, hack, and present on their latest projects. Devrooms are themed around topics such as Security, Quantum Computing, and Data Analytics. This year, for the first time, FOSDEM also included a “Funding the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Ecosystem” devroom, and the OpenSSL Foundation was proud to participate.

Amy Parker, Chief Funding Officer, was one of a dozen presenters in this day-long devroom. As a Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE) with more than twenty years of nonprofit experience, Amy shared fundraising data, insights, and best practices with the FOSS community. We see this kind of knowledge sharing as just one way that the OpenSSL Foundation actively participates in and gives back to the FOSS community.

“FOSS projects only exist because of generous people who give of their time and resources,” Amy said. “But when these projects face a funding need, most people who find themselves asking for donations lack fundraising experience, find it uncomfortable, and don’t know where to start. One of my goals in delivering this talk was to help more of our FOSS leaders move beyond their fear and discomfort by looking at fundraising from a new perspective.”

She set up that new perspective early on with this quote from Kay Sprinkel Grace’s book Beyond Fundraising, “Let go of the idea that fundraising is a begging process based on the needs of the organization and view it as an investment process based on the needs the organization is meeting.”

You can watch a recording of Amy’s talk, “Storytelling, networking, and strategy: three keys to successful fundraising,” here:

Slides and other media are also available through FOSDEM. She welcomes our community’s feedback and questions.

Following Amy’s talk, while waiting in line for coffee, Community Manager Jon Ericson spoke with a few people who had attended Amy’s talk. Péter T. Winkler, a software engineering student at CODE University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, shared that it was “great to hear from someone with decades of experience. We need more of this in the open source world.” He also thought it was interesting that Amy “recommended deepening relationships with the closest supporters individually, instead of asking a wide audience for small amounts” when it comes to fundraising.

FOSDEM is a gathering place for people who are fascinated by open source. As Jon talked with Péter, Kirsten Hauck, and Tobias Niedermayr, a system engineer at CANCOM, he noticed they all had heard of OpenSSL, but they didn’t necessarily know about our mission. Another person who attended Amy’s talk shared, “Although I have known about OpenSSL for a long time, this was the first moment when I gained a complete understanding of the project (its mission, not all the complex tech details).”

We are grateful to everyone who gives of their time to create FOSDEM and especially the Funding the FOSS Ecosystem devroom’s organizers for organizing the first-ever funding-focused devroom: FSFE, Linux Foundation, NLNet, Probabl.ai, Prototype Fund, Sovereign Tech Fund, and Andriy Utkin.