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Great news: After a three-month search, I'm now contracting with two sponsors who are funding a total of 60% of my time for Drupal core release management. Let me introduce you!
HeroDevs
HeroDevs' business is helping organizations with major open-source software platforms that are nearing or past end-of-life. As it happens, Drupal has one of those. I'm consulting for them part-time on Drupal and its ecosystem, including mentoring them on Drupal contribution, and in return they are now directly sponsoring my work on Drupal 10 for 16 hours per week.
Salsa Digital
In the near term, another 8 hours per week of my commits and security issue work will be funded by the super-awesome Salsa Digital. Salsa's an Australia-based Drupal shop with a commitment to open government and open source. In recent years they've also sponsored the contributions of longtime Drupalist Kristen Pol: core contributor, module author, mentor, speaker, organizer… and one of only a handful of people I know with a Drupal.org user ID shorter than five digits. In other words, legit.
And my Patreon sponsors
Having 24 hours per week for core is a relief after three months of being completely unemployed, but it's still not enough to cover all the work I did for core in a full-time salaried position. Thankfully, numerous members of the community have stepped up to fill some of the gaps with smaller sponsorships on Patreon.
My Patreon membership tiers are tied to the typical monthly costs of some of the tasks I do for the Drupal community, like quick (10-15 minute) or in-depth (hour-long) core code reviews, helping prepare Drupal core release milestones (5-15 hours per milestone), or creating core security releases (10-20 hours per release, once every few months). Keep in mind that these hours are all only my part of community efforts that might involve five to ten other contributors.
It's my hope that my Patreon page will add transparency about the costs of maintaining Drupal core, educate the community, and provide an opportunity for individuals and organizations with limited budgets to invest in Drupal core release management. This distributed funding will also hopefully help me weather future shifts in my contracted sponsorships.
Ready to help keep core stable and secure? You can sponsor me on Patreon too!
Seeking one more sponsor in 2024
For the rest of 2023, I'm going to reserve my remaining time for an important potential core project. I'd like to get back to at least 80% funded time for core release management in 2024. So, if my current sponsorships continue, I might look for one more sponsor for around $3500 USD per month. Such an investment would put your organization in the top 1% of Drupal contributors, and potentially qualify you for the first page of the Drupal.org Marketplace.
Sponsoring a core committer is good for Drupal and good for you! Agileana shared the following about sponsoring my contribution during the first half of 2023:
It has been an honor to sponsor Jess. She has represented us at DrupalCon, guided us in our own contributions, and motivated our developers. Strangers have thanked and congratulated us for sponsoring Jess. Some people have called it a coup.
Because of her leadership, we have climbed our way to the first page of Drupal.org's marketplace. Jess is not only an ambassador for Drupal, she is an ambassador for Agileana as well.
If you rely on Drupal for your business, services, or livelihood, we recommend that you consider sponsoring Jess as well. It will reinforce your brand as a leader in the Drupal community.
More on the benefits of sponsoring a core committer.
