The Open Web Fund

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The Open Web has changed the world and we have all benefited. We’ve learned skills, launched careers, formed friendships, met life partners, championed causes, and experienced the outputs of infinite creativity. We’ve also created products, platforms, communities, and entire ecosystems that wouldn’t exist without the Open Web.

WordPress is a product of the Open Web, built on the four core freedoms of Open Source software. WordPress powers more than a third of all websites and has become an Operating System for the Open Web, serving creators across a wide range of ecosystems spanning cultures, languages, and geographies. For individuals and organizations relying on or connected to the Open Web, WordPress matters.

The Open Web Fund exists to help WordPress continuously improve as an Operating System. It is funded by individuals and organizations that believe in the importance of the Open Web and in WordPress as its Operating System.

Fund Focus

The Open Web Fund is focused on two types of initiatives:

  1. Making it easier for individuals and organizations to develop great plugins for WordPress
  2. Making the plugin selection and usage experience better for creators on WordPress

Examples of the types of projects the fund will focus on include:

  • Bringing GraphQL to WordPress to make it easier for non-WordPress developers to build applications (Jason Bahl is already doing amazing work on this via the WP GraphQL project)
  • Creating developer-focused tools that lower the barrier of entry to writing great code for WordPress and make it easier for new developers to get up to speed (Peter Suhm’s Branch project and the Tide project are both great examples)
  • Bringing design systems to WordPress to speed up and streamline the plugin creation process
  • Creating automation around tools like OpenRank, designed to give product managers and ultimately end users better insights into the quality of WordPress plugins

Milestones

The first Milestone for the fund is reaching $10,000 per month in recurring contributions through individual and organization sponsorship.

A maximum of $10,000 per month will go to support the following activities:

  1. Creating free guides and resources on GrowInWP.com to help individuals and organizations build great plugins. (The Ecosystem Plugins report and the guide to Creating an Ecosystem Plugin are recent examples)
  2. Developing, curating, and prioritizing a public list of fund initiatives
  3. Forming a public fund advisory committee to provide guidance on fund initiatives
  4. Raising additional funds through individual and organization sponsorship
  5. Administering the fund (funding initiatives, providing support to recipients, reporting progress, etc)

Funds received above $10,000 per month will go directly to fund initiatives.

Next Steps

My target is to have the initial $10,000 in funding in place by June 1, 2019, at which point I intend to begin promoting the fund publicly. My focus between now and then is asking the individuals and organizations who know and trust me to contribute to the fund. If you’re reading this and I haven’t asked you personally yet, would you let me know?

If I’ve asked you personally and you’re ready to get started, setup the contribution level of your choice on our Open Collective funding page: https://opencollective.com/open-web-fund