Why I want people to donate to the PSF

The Python Software Foundation is having its annual donation drive (on track to reach its goals), and I want to talk a little about why I really want people to donate this year, more so than before. I posted this as a long thread on twitter originally, but several people asked me to paste it in a blog for easier reading. I've tweaked a bit of the text to fit the different medium, but the message is the same.

TLDR: I'll double-match your donations to the PSF.

The PSF was created nearly twenty years ago because Python grew to a point where it needed a legal custodian for its IP/trademarks. I was a (new) core developer at the time, so I became a founding PSF member, and then got elected to its first Board of Directors (and second/third).

The PSF was originally modelled after the Apache Software Foundation, which Greg Stein (another core dev & founding board member) was active in. We did a lot of things because they did it (like the original membership model), and I do believe it gave us a massive head start. I don't think many of us, at the time, really knew what we were doing. We had ideas of what we wanted the PSF to be, but not sure how we would get there. We were also all just volunteers, most with little experience in non-profit work. We learned a lot, though, or at least I did.

The early PSF had no staff, not much money, and not much to spend money on. I think we had an idea of growing the PSF, pulling in corporate sponsorship to pay for Python development, but we didn't know how to get there. We didn't really have the infrastructure to spend money. It took years and a lot of trial and error to build that infrastructure. I stepped down from the board after 3 years, but kept involved with the PSF. The PSF turned itself into a community support vehicle, spending money on outreach and local communities, as well as PyCon US.

Then the PSF hired Ewa Jodlowska as Secretary, then as Director of Operations, then as Executive Director, and suddenly we could manage staff! Hire people! Organise volunteers! Ewa has been immensely valuable in pushing the PSF forward. Others, too! Lots of good volunteers. The PSF also changed its membership model, going from purely voted in members (what are now Fellows) to a more open model, giving voting rights to anyone who put in effort, organising power, or money. We dropped the idea of corporate members, making them non-voting sponsors.

The PSF now has 7(!!) employees (mostly part-time), to take care of finances, tax rules, fundraising, organising PyCon US, all the technical infrastructure of python.org and of core development . But it's all supporting the volunteer community, not doing their work. Because of that staff expertise, we can now offer fiscal sponsorship, allowing Python projects to offer tax-deductible donations (in the US) without having to set up their own non-profit or all the financial scaffolding that requires.

Also because of the staff expertise, as well as a lot of volunteer effort, we've been able to get specific projects funded, and hired contractors to do the work (a lot of it on PyPI, which has made tremendous leaps forward because of it). PyPI's last ~5 years have been amazing.  One of the things the Python Core Developers have been wanting to do is move from bugs.python.org to GitHub Issues (see PEP 581 and PEP 588). Thanks to Ewa and the PSF, as well as GitHub itself, that's now actively being worked on.

Similarly, the Python Steering Council and the PSF have facilitated Kyle Stanley's Core Developer internship (https://twitter.com/aeros_py/status/1337223467754807296). We wouldn't have been able to offer the support an intern needs without the growth of the PSF and the investment in people like Ee Durbin, the PSF's Director of Infrastructure.

One of the next steps we want to take here is to hire people to work on Python itself. Actual developers to assist the volunteers, to do some of the less attractive jobs or the more long-term projects. We had planned to fundraise for this starting at last PyCon US, but... well...

Hiring people is a serious investment. It's not just that you have to pay them, you have to offer them support, room to grow, worthwhile goals, empower them. You also have to give them job security. A fixed contract is fine for project work, but that's not what we're after here. We want to hire core developers, which we now have the infrastructure and support for, but not just for a year. We want to make long-term investments in long-term employment for long-term benefits to Python. We need more than a year's or two of funding for this.

We need the PSF to be in a good financial state to support this. We don't want to be forced to fire anyone, and we don't want to bleed the PSF dry. COVID-19's effects on PyCon US were a big blow to our plans. The PSF survived it pretty well, but it definitely changed the prospects. The PSF is looking to improve its financial situation, to rely less on PyCon or donations. We have a number of things we're considering, in fact, but we have to do this all with great care to avoid alienating the Python community, not to mention tax laws. It's work in progress.

So, please! If you can, donate to the PSF. If you go to https://matcher.pyfound.org afterwards, I'll triple your donation. (If your company uses something like Benevity and you want me to match you, let me know and we'll figure something out.)

Also, if you're a corporate user of Python, consider getting your company to support the PSF. Lots of companies have done so already, many for years. Thank you very much! But please, consider giving more ;-) The PSF is putting it to really good use.