The goal of the Blender Development Fund is to transparently communicate about the financial contributions that Blender receives, and to enable the Blender project to grow.
All Development Fund grants and supported projects have been published on blender.org since 2011. Grant recipients are also expected to write frequent reports. To improve transparency and involvement we will also:
Blender Foundation’s annual reports give an extensive overview of projects, supported people, income and expenses.
Final decisions on assigning developer grants will be made by the Blender Foundation, verified and supported by blender.org development project administrators - the five top contributors to Blender.
Applications for development grants are currently only possible by an endorsement by an active core Blender contributor. Contact one of the developers to learn more.
We offer a Development Fund membership based on a small recurring donation, starting at 5 Euro per month. As reward members can get “badges” (tokens that show their support on prominent Blender websites) and a name mention on the blender.org website.
Companies and organizations are also welcome to sign up for individual membership and (optionally) have their company name and url mentioned.
Under the following conditions we offer a credit on our website:
Find more information about badges here!
This high rated membership level starts at 6k per year and is for organizations who want the option to monitor in more detail the projects that will get funded with their contributions. They will get personal attention from the Blender team for strategic discussions and feedback on the roadmap.
In addition to this, corporate members can get a prominent name and logo mention on blender.org and in official publications by Blender Foundation .
Blender is not an official recognized charity (*), for that reason donations do not offer tax benefits. If you pay as a private person, you cannot submit the donation as deduction for income taxes.
If you pay as a corporation, rules are different per country. In most cases, the donation receipt (and certainly that for the recurring donation) is considered to be a legit cost which you can deduct from tax. Sometimes companies book the Development Fund membership as a type of sponsoring.
(*) Blender Foundation is in the process of becoming an official recognized charity for taxes, but it appears to be increasingly difficult to do get this status for free/open source projects.