Hello Friends. A thought came to me last night that I would like to share with you. During a recent Blender Today LIVE, Pablo noticed that donations to the Development Fund have been dwindling. I also recalled what Blender’s download statistics look like - roughly 500k downloads per month.
What if we, as users benefiting from Blender for free every day, started a tradition of donating 1$ every time we download a new version? Maybe we can create something unprecedented on the internet?
Of course, this is a question everyone must answer for themselves. However, I can’t think of a more supportive community than this one, so I have an inkling what the answer might be :).
I believe this initiative could potentially enable the Foundation to hire more talented developers. Additionally, from a business perspective, knowing that a certain amount of funds will be credited to the account after the release of each new version of Blender, future investments could potentially be planned more accurately.
I find it sad that there’s only 3183 people on the Dev Fund list.
3…1…8…3.
$5/month is cheap. That’s less than cafe mocha at a coffee shop.
$5 A MONTH, guys.
It’s great to support the idea of FOSS. Agreeing with an idea takes Zero Effort. None. Support the people who actually CREATE IT, and pull out the credit card.
Perhaps that could be a nice idea. Considering the number of downloads this could really add up and it surely isn’t too much for so many. It’s encouraging at least to see a suggested donation button appearing now.
I do wish people would give more support. This is so important. I have tried to support Blender financially ever since I seriously started using it. I was on the Cloud, now called Studio since Project Gooseberry days and more more recenlty in last couple of years set up a derect annual payment to the dev fund.
Have to admit my Studio contributions sometimes have skipped a month or two but sometimes money has been really tough. I will always try to keep my Blender support up. Blender is so vital now for me and I shudder to think of the situation for independent creatives without it there.
Please support Blender development people if it is important to your work. Even if just suggested it is as little as a dollar a download.
It seems to me that if more and more people were convinced of this idea, the effect could be much better than the Development Fund, because we have lived to see the times when the word “subscription” subconsciously does not arouse enthusiasm, and we have the impression that something is being taken away from us, which in my opinion affects the small number of subscribers. However, if we develop the impulse to donate $ 1 right after downloading the new version of blender, it may turn out that we subconsciously feel happy, because is there anything better than giving someone a gift?
I don’t know if it’s new but it seems that Pablo Dobarro added a “thanks” page that appears after the Blender download has started. I hope it can invite users donate from time to time.
I think it has been there for a little while, but it is only seen by those who download from the download page (those of us who primarily use buildbot builds do not see an additional page).
Then again it might be new, since it is not the You are Breathtaking page that people downloading were greeted with before.
I really enjoyed buying the blender usb rocket at the 2.8 times.
It could be nice if there would be more cool merch like that.
Just throwing ideas, some of the best stuff here could be printed in limited editions to be sold…
More Blender usb rockets with different files in them…
Cool merch to raise funds that go directly to BF.
I am myself subscribed to Blender think that give access to open movie stuff and tutorials, I think it’s 11$ a month or something, I encourage people to subscribe.
Without going to the level of becoming annoying, I think Blender has more room to ask for funds, specially if there is content or cool merch in exchange.
Trying to encourage more people to donate to Blender is a great goal, but I have always found “less than a cup of coffee” comparisons an off putting attempt to guilt people without thought of their financial circumstances. I certainly couldn’t afford the extravagance of coffee shop prices, so using it to suggest a bargain backfires somewhat.
When my current financial situation improves, I’ll throw some money Blender’s way. But no more well meaning guilt trips, please.
You’re inventing a wheel here. Plenty of options are available. Just pick one and support Blender.
I was subscribed to a monthly donations. I resubscribed to an early option, which is more convinient to me.
Also, as far as I know paying micro donations is worse for Blender. There are transaction fees BF need to pay for each donation. So paying $1 each month will get BF probably almost nothing compared to a one time $12 donation or an early or monthly commitment.
The options are all there. It’s up to each individual to just punch in the credit card details and support Blender. It can’t be simpler in principle. In practice though… only a fraction of users support Blender with money.
I do not think you’re re-inventing the wheel and I think your suggestion is excellent!
If I might add. I also think the BF could without the slightest bit of shame add a button next to the download that suggests throwing in a penny. Not a single person would frown on that and the cool part is, it would probably work wonders.
Just to make sure there is no sense of panic to be had, the Blender Development Fund is still getting the BF a bit over 1 million USD a year, so they remain pretty far from “Brother can you spare a dime” levels, and as such far from anything that threatens the Blender project itself.
That said, I do wonder how many now are even doing one-time donations now as the subscription options eliminate the need for a reminder, and how many are donating with crypto coins these days amid their volatility and their penchant for vanishing from wallets? Could it be time to clean up and streamline the donations page?
As an aside, I wonder if BF ever applied for something like a EU grant. Given the prospect of future career opportunities and value to the science and research community as well as potential benefits to various fields of education – assumably, Blender should be a perfect fit for a hefty grant.
Not even just from the EU, but from other global bodies of influence. It’s a widely important project that should impact much more than the aforementioned – many would associate it with the entertainment industry only, or primarily – but its potential reaches a number of further dimensions - enabling income streams for people in developing regions, to name one example.
The point being, more than just the general public and businesses should be involved in backing BF – governmental and global institutions should be involved as well.
Anyone know if they tried that route – if not, I guess there’s no harm trying?
I’ve worked on projects that were funded by grants. The grants required a scope of work that had mandatory deliverables, on an agreed schedule, as well as a long reporting process that followed the progress and determined if the deliverables had been met and to what level of improvement and result.
I don’t know how EU grants work, but if it’s anything like that I don’t feel like it’s something that the blender foundation would necessarily be a good fit for.
I’m pretty sure they’ve done that in the past, at least in so far as some Open Movie projects used to be partially funded via government grants, iirc.
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Ardour ( https://ardour.org/ ) is also open source,
but they want you to make a monthly contribution
if you want all the privileges.
Minimum monthly contribution is ONE dollar.
So, fine; I contribute a dollar per month,
and if ten thousand people do the same,
that is enough to pay for expenses and a couple of developers.
They have consistently been meeting
their financial goals, month after month.
I have also noticed that only a few YouTubers actively encourage their viewers to donate to the Blender Foundation.
Considering that many newcomers discover Blender through YouTube channels, I believe there is a tremendous opportunity to make a significant impact. If these channels take just a few seconds to encourage their audiences to donate, it could be incredibly effective in generating support for the Blender project.
