The Blender Development Fund is an essential resource aimed at supporting the sustainable development of Blender, ensuring that it remains a free and open-source 3D creation suite accessible to all. The fund plays a pivotal role in facilitating continuous improvements, fostering innovation, and maintaining the high standards of the software. Contributions to the fund are crucial as they finance the Blender team's operations, including development, documentation, and bug fixes.
The Blender Development Fund offers several membership levels to cater to both individuals and corporate entities. These memberships not only provide financial backing to the projects but also offer a range of benefits, fostering a closer connection between contributors and the development process.
Blender is more than just software; it's a community-driven project that thrives on collaboration and innovation. As Blender continues to evolve, the Development Fund ensures that the core team can focus on improving functionality, adding new features, and maintaining the high standards required by professional users. Your contributions help keep Blender at the cutting edge of technology and freely available to millions of users worldwide.
The Blender Development Fund finances several key areas:
Individual Supporters: Perfect for artists and freelance professionals who want to help sustain Blender’s development. Starting from as little as €5 per month, you can make a real difference. Benefits for individual members include badges and mentions on the website.
Corporate Members: Designed for organizaiton and companies that rely on Blender for their business operations. As a member of the Blender Development Fund, you receive prominent recognition in the Blender community. Higher membership levels offer increased engagement through direct interactions with the Blender team, feedback on project roadmaps, and additional communication on blender.org (2.3M unique visitors per month). Learn more about Corporate memberships.
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.
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.