Earlier last month I saw a post from @gotosocial mentioning they're looking for donations. And it hit me that there should be a better way to know what projects, that are building blocks for The #Fediverse, are looking for funding. Additionally, I'd love to know the progress and the overall health of Fediverse project funding.

So I got to tinkering on a site that shows what projects need funding, how much, the progress, and tried to show how your personal donation could help.

Right now Fediverse funding is a black box. Over time I have no idea if these projects as a whole are doing better or worse. If people are donating more or less. There are no trends. Because realistically, if we see that all projects are losing support or something, it'd be great to work together to figure it out. It would also be great to see if as The Fediverse grows, if financial support grows as well.

So I put together https://fedifunding.org as an experiment.

This page might not be helpful, or projects don't want to be listed, or nobody actually cares about the financial health of things. But I cared. And I hoped if people saw trends and who needs what, and what their donations can do, that people would be more likely to provide support. A flawed hypothesis, maybe. Or perhaps adding this visibility centrally is something that projects wouldn't appreciate.

I didn't know at the time that #Owncast was losing our infrastructure sponsor, and when I mentioned it, people did donate, and it's awesome for everyone to be able to see that support visually.

So if you rely on something for your Fediverse experience and see it's trying to reach a funding goal, hopefully you'll notice.

Just an idea to help all of these projects that we rely on so heavily to become sustainable.