How to Fund Your Open Source Project's Next Milestone

Fund an open source project by setting a Wishlist / Project Support goal for one specific milestone — a v2 rewrite, a CI pipeline, a backlog-clearing sprint — paired with a visible progress bar, so backers see exactly what they're funding instead of sending an open-ended tip toward general upkeep.

A note on sourcing: claims about FanBell's own fees and mechanics on this page are vendor-stated, drawn from FanBell's public pricing and how it works pages and labelled as such. Every third-party figure cites the platform's own documentation, the published study, or the vendor's price list directly, with the month it was verified.

Open source runs on time that mostly isn't paid for. GitHub's 2025 Octoverse report counts 395 million public and open source repositories on the platform, up 72 million year over year (Octoverse 2025). GitHub announced on July 20, 2026 that more than $100 million had been invested in open source through GitHub Sponsors since 2019, reaching over 70,000 maintainers and organizations from more than 280,000 sponsors (GitHub Blog) — real money, but concentrated on a small slice of the repository count. The 2024 Tidelift Maintainer Impact Report, a survey of more than 400 open source maintainers, found that 60% of maintainers describe themselves as unpaid hobbyists and only 12% consider themselves professionals earning most or all of their income from maintaining projects (2024 Tidelift Maintainer Impact Report). A "buy me a coffee" tip jar is fine for ongoing support, but it doesn't say what the money is for. A funding goal does: it names one milestone, states a target, and shows backers exactly how close it is.

What's the difference between a funding goal and a tip?

A tip is an open-ended one-time payment with no stated purpose beyond thanks, while a funding goal names one specific milestone, states a target amount, and shows a progress bar toward that target. Tips fund general upkeep; a funding goal funds a defined outcome a backer can watch complete.

Maintainer demand for paid work is documented: the 2024 Tidelift Maintainer Impact Report, a survey of more than 400 open source maintainers, found that 44% of respondents are unpaid but would like to get paid for their maintenance work. What a funding goal adds over a tip jar is a stated purpose that a prospective backer can evaluate before paying. On FanBell, the two are separate offers: Tips are unscoped one-time support with no reply or delivery required, while Wishlist / Project Support is cash directed at a named goal with a visible progress bar. A follower dropping $5 with no note is a tip; 40 followers each putting money toward "$3,000 to fund the v2 rewrite" is a project goal. Keep the two offers distinct — a goal that never resolves into anything concrete reads the same as an unscoped tip jar to the person funding it. For the setup details on the tip side specifically, see how a maintainer accepts tips separately from a funding goal.

Which platforms let you fund a specific OSS milestone?

GitHub Sponsors, Open Collective, and FanBell all let maintainers raise money, but each frames the target differently: GitHub Sponsors goals track a monthly sponsorship amount or a sponsor count, Open Collective goals track a balance or yearly budget through a fiscal host, and a FanBell Wishlist / Project Support goal tracks one named milestone.

GitHub's sponsorship goals are built around recurring support rather than a single milestone total, and GitHub's documentation is explicit about the two goal types available. GitHub Sponsors also applies a payout floor to some maintainers: the GitHub Sponsors Additional Terms state that a sponsored developer paid by ACH or wire transfer receives a payout only in a month when the balance reaches $100 USD, while a developer paid through Stripe Connect is paid on the 22nd of each month regardless of the balance (GitHub Sponsors Additional Terms).

"Your goal can set a target for the number of sponsors you want to have or the amount of money you want to earn each month. You can only set one goal up at a time." — GitHub Docs, "Managing your sponsorship goal"

Open Collective offers a public goal progress bar, but Open Collective also imposes a structural requirement that GitHub Sponsors and FanBell do not: "Every Collective that receives or pays out money needs a Fiscal Host," per Open Collective's fiscal host documentation. Open Collective reported in its own 2024 platform update that more than 3,500 collectives were using the platform and had collectively raised more than $100 million (Open Collective update). None of the three options is strictly better than the others — each fits a different need, and many maintainers run more than one at once rather than picking a single platform.

How do you pick a milestone worth funding?

A fundable milestone is specific, time-bound, and describable in one sentence: a v2 rewrite, a CI pipeline, a documentation overhaul, or a sprint to close a stated number of open issues. Backers fund outcomes they can picture finishing, so scope the goal narrowly enough that you can report completion.

Good milestone candidates are usually the roadmap work that has stalled precisely because it doesn't fit into spare evenings: a full architecture rewrite, a CI/release pipeline that replaces manual publishing, a dedicated sprint to close a backlog of open issues, or a documentation overhaul. A goal titled "help me keep working on this" gives a backer nothing to evaluate, while "ship the v2 rewrite" clearly resolves — treat the framing preference as practical advice from how funding pages read, not as a measured conversion effect. The same narrow-scoping logic carries over when the milestone is a dataset rather than a codebase — see how to fund an open dataset project for that version. The crowdfunding research points in a compatible direction on preparation: Ethan Mollick's 2014 study of 48,500 Kickstarter projects in the Journal of Business Venturing found that an average film project with a pitch video had a 37% chance of success versus 15% without one.

Dollar amounts in a milestone goal are illustrative framing, not earnings guarantees: what an open source funding goal actually raises depends on the size of the project's user base, the audience's willingness to pay, and how clearly the milestone is scoped.

How does a funding goal with a progress bar work on FanBell?

A FanBell Wishlist / Project Support goal is a page where fans send cash toward a stated target, and FanBell displays a progress bar that updates as contributions arrive. FanBell documents the offer as cash toward a creator goal: no shipping, no tiered reward levels, no product fulfillment.

Setting one up means naming the milestone, writing a sentence or two on what it funds and what "done" looks like, and linking the page from wherever your project already sends people — a README badge, a release-notes line, or a pinned issue. FanBell requires no follower minimum and no fiscal host to run a project goal, so a maintainer with a small user base can run a goal the same way a larger project can. FanBell's how-it-works page states the cost in one line, as of September 2026: "It's free to start with no monthly fee. A 12% platform fee applies only when a fan actually pays you." FanBell's pricing page adds the settlement detail verbatim, as of September 2026: "The fan pays only the displayed price. FanBell charges a 12% platform fee, and payment-processing fees are deducted separately from creator earnings."

For a security-specific version of the same funding model, see funding a bug bounty or CVE research project; for funding a not-yet-shipped product's build phase rather than an existing project's roadmap, see funding an indie SaaS build.

Why does funding a maintainer's time actually help the project?

Paying maintainers correlates with better security and maintenance practices, not just faster features. The 2024 Tidelift Maintainer Impact Report, a survey of more than 400 open source maintainers, found paid maintainers 8–26 percentage points more likely than unpaid maintainers to follow practices such as two-factor authentication and static code analysis.

"Nearly across the board, paid maintainers are 8–26 percentage points (or, on average 55%) more likely to implement many critical security and maintenance practices than unpaid maintainers." — 2024 Tidelift Maintainer Impact Report

The 2024 Tidelift Maintainer Impact Report also found that 60% of open source maintainers have quit or considered quitting maintaining a project at some point. The economic stakes for the companies that consume open source are large as well. Harvard Business School Working Paper 24-038, "The Value of Open Source Software" by Manuel Hoffmann, Frank Nagle, and Yanuo Zhou (January 2024), estimates the demand-side value of open source software at $8.8 trillion and finds that firms would need to spend 3.5 times more on software if open source did not exist. Backing a milestone isn't just charity toward a feature request — funding a milestone buys the maintainer time that keeps the project's practices current. Framing a funding goal around what dedicated time buys, not only what ships, makes the ask concrete for the companies and developers who already depend on the project in production. When the milestone is a full release rather than routine maintenance, the same time-buys-outcomes framing applies — see how to fund your next product launch.

How do you price and scope a funding goal?

Price a funding goal from the real time the milestone takes and state that estimate plainly instead of picking a round number. Keep targets modest: across the 48,500 Kickstarter projects Ethan Mollick analyzed in the Journal of Business Venturing, increasing goal size was negatively associated with campaign success.

"Six weeks of dedicated time on the rewrite" is easier for a backer to evaluate than an unexplained total, so show the arithmetic behind the number. Decide upfront what happens if the target isn't reached — keep the money toward the milestone anyway, or fold it into general project support — and state that policy on the funding page so backers aren't guessing. Avoid stacking unrelated asks into one goal: a rewrite and a docs overhaul are two goals, not one.

What should a project-funding page say before someone pays?

A project-funding page should state, in a sentence or two, what the milestone is, what it costs in time and money, and what "done" looks like. Backers evaluating a funding page are reading for evidence of preparation, so a complete and specific pitch does more work for the maintainer than a longer one.

Preparation signals are measurable in the crowdfunding literature: Ethan Mollick's study of 48,500 Kickstarter projects in the Journal of Business Venturing reports that "signals such as videos and frequent updates are associated with greater success, and spelling errors reduce the chance of success". For an open source funding page, the equivalent signals are a named milestone, a stated target, a time estimate, and a definition of done.

Keep the page honest about uncertainty: an open source rewrite can take longer than planned, and it's reasonable to say so rather than promise a fixed delivery date. Backers funding a maintainer's time are generally backing the effort and the track record, not a guaranteed outcome by a guaranteed date.

Where does a funding goal fit next to other ways to monetize a project?

A project-funding goal is one income stream among several, not a replacement for the others. Treat the options as complementary: recurring sponsorships for steady supporters, tips for spontaneous thanks, paid services for scoped client work, and a milestone goal for the one outcome backers can watch complete.

Recurring sponsorship platforms are the steady layer — GitHub reported more than 280,000 sponsors funding over 70,000 maintainers and organizations through GitHub Sponsors as of July 2026. Alongside recurring sponsorship, one-off Tips catch general support, and — for developers who also take on paid work — a scoped Creator Service like a code review or debugging session is a deliverable-based offer rather than a funding goal. For maintainers whose paid work extends into consulting more broadly, FanBell for developers covers how async paid interactions fit alongside a maintainer's existing project. The same complementary mix of offers applies outside of code too — see how to fund a UX case study project for a design-focused example of the same model.

Frequently asked questions

Is a funding goal the same thing as accepting tips?

No. A tip is an unscoped, one-time payment with no stated purpose, while a Wishlist / Project Support goal names a specific milestone, states a target, and shows a progress bar toward it. Both can run on the same FanBell page as separate offers.

Does the progress bar update automatically as people fund the goal?

Yes. As fans send money toward a Wishlist / Project Support goal, FanBell updates the progress bar so backers can see how close the target is without the maintainer having to post updates manually.

Do I need a registered nonprofit or a fiscal host to accept project funding?

No. FanBell doesn't require incorporation or a fiscal host to set up a Wishlist / Project Support goal. Some other platforms are structured differently: Open Collective's documentation states that "every Collective that receives or pays out money needs a Fiscal Host," and a fiscal host may charge a host fee of typically 4–10%.

What does FanBell charge to run a project-funding goal?

FanBell is free to start with no monthly fee and applies a 12% platform fee only when a fan pays, with no follower minimum. Card-processing fees apply on top of the platform fee — Stripe's published pricing lists standard US online-card processing at 2.9% + $0.30 per successful charge.

Can I fund a security research project the same way?

Yes, but keep security research as a separate goal from general roadmap funding. Funding a bug bounty or CVE research project covers the security-research-specific version of the same Wishlist / Project Support model.

Create your free FanBell page and turn your next roadmap milestone into a goal your users can actually fund.