Nathan Wrigley speaks with Roger Williams, Partnership and Community Manager for North America at Kinsta, about reimagining sponsored contributions to WordPress and other open source projects. Roger helped establish Kinsta’s sponsored contributions program in early 2025 and explains how companies can approach funding contributors, why it matters, and how to balance business needs with open source values.
Roger’s role is to connect Kinsta with the WordPress community, agency partners, and technology collaborators. His interest in sponsored contributions grew into a program at Kinsta that funnels resources back into WordPress and related projects. As WordPress powers over 40% of the web, sustainable funding for maintenance and development is increasingly important.
The central question Roger explores is how to bring businesses—especially those that use WordPress but don’t yet contribute—into the conversation about funding contributors. He frames the issue as a spectrum between traditional philanthropic contributions (people donating time out of passion) and business realities (companies needing measurable returns). His goal is to reach the group in the middle: organizations that are close to contributing but need help understanding the benefits and how to justify sponsorship internally.
Roger identifies three audiences:
– People already inside the project (obvious contributors).
– Businesses and professionals who use open source but need nudging to contribute.
– The broader public, unfamiliar with how open source work is sustained.
To persuade businesses, he recommends reframing the conversation around return on investment (ROI), using three categories of benefit:
– Strategic: For hosting companies, a better WordPress means a better product (performance, security), reducing support costs and business risk.
– Operational: Contributing helps manage technical debt—offloading maintenance to the larger project can reduce internal burdens.
– Second-order benefits: Networking, hiring pipelines, brand goodwill, and developer learning are harder to quantify but meaningful.
On whom to sponsor, Roger argues that companies should not limit themselves to core code contributors. Sponsorship can help documentation teams, Polyglots (translations), event organisers, and other roles that make WordPress accessible and usable. Kinsta’s own priorities include areas that align with their business—performance, security, and multilingual support—so sponsoring Polyglots and documentation is strategic for them.
Practical steps for organizations that want to start sponsoring:
– Don’t overthink it—start small and iterate.
– Set aside a realistic budget and build a repeatable process.
– Create an intake form for prospective contributors that asks about their work, past contributions, goals, and willingness to engage in low-effort promotional activities (e.g., a blog post, podcast appearance).
– Be cautious and respectful about marketing: sponsorship should primarily support the project, not serve as an overt marketing campaign.
For contributors seeking sponsorship, Roger advises:
– Approach companies with a clear pitch: describe what you work on, how it benefits their organisation, and what outcomes they can expect.
– Ask simple questions: Does the company have a formal sponsored contribution program? If not, offer to help create one.
– Communicate in business language—frame benefits in operational or strategic terms as well as community impact.
On ROI and promotion, Roger suggests treating sponsorship as part of brand marketing. The benefits are often indirect: contributors sponsored by a company will naturally mention that support within the community, creating organic goodwill. Companies can amplify this with gentle promotion such as podcast interviews or blog posts, but should avoid heavy-handed marketing demands on contributors.
Roger discusses potential coordination beyond individual companies. Initiatives like the WP Community Collective (WPCC) exist to centralize sponsorship and distribution of funds, which can be helpful, but forming consortia introduces governance complexity. His advice is pragmatic: start company-by-company to avoid slowing momentum, but be open to collaborative models where appropriate.
Internal buy-in at organisations requires preparation. Roger recommends three internal steps:
– Understand organisational goals and align sponsorship choices to those goals (e.g., Polyglots for multilingual customer bases).
– Be patient but ready: secure budget approval may take time; have processes and relationships ready so you can act when funding arrives.
– Anticipate objections: prepare arguments around strategic, operational, and second-order benefits tailored to different stakeholders (CTOs, marketing, executives).
Operational details to decide early include how sponsorship payments will be handled (direct payments, GitHub Sponsors, contracts), and whether any simple agreements are needed (e.g., clarity about promotion and expectations). Keep asks of contributors small and respectful—sponsorship should facilitate their work, not serve as a marketing quid pro quo.
Roger emphasises starting now: getting involved in sponsored contributions is better than waiting for a perfect system. Sponsorship programs will evolve; the initial aim should be to create transparent, repeatable processes that make it easy for contributors to apply and for organisations to sponsor.
Finally, Roger notes the importance of relationship-building. Kinsta’s approach involves named contacts (he and colleagues Marcel Bootsman and Alex Michaelson) handling sponsorships for different regions, making it straightforward for contributors to reach out. He invites conversations and feedback and is active on LinkedIn for follow-up discussions.
Overall, the conversation stresses pragmatism: broaden the contribution conversation beyond philanthropy by clearly communicating business-aligned benefits, start small with structured processes, and treat sponsorship as part of brand and operational strategy while remaining respectful of the open source ethos.
