Overview
Roger Williams, Partnership and Community Manager for North America at Kinsta, outlines why companies should sponsor WordPress contributors and how to do it responsibly. Kinsta launched a sponsored contributions program in January 2025; Roger shares the rationale, operational steps, and tensions encountered when aligning business needs with community values.
Why sponsor contributors?
– WordPress began as a volunteer-driven project, but its scale today requires sustainable support. Organizations that rely on WordPress benefit when the project is healthy, secure, and well-maintained.
– Sponsorship brings more organizations into the conversation, expanding the pool of people who improve the project and reducing single-source burden.
– To persuade business leaders, explain sponsorship in terms they understand: strategic gains, operational savings, and less-tangible second-order benefits.
Three kinds of benefits
1. Strategic: Contributions align directly with business objectives. For example, hosting providers reduce support and infrastructure costs when WordPress is more secure, performant, and stable.
2. Operational: Financial or time investments can address shared technical debt and maintenance work, lowering long-term internal engineering costs.
3. Second-order: Network effects such as reputation, hiring pipelines, community goodwill, and indirect brand visibility that are valuable but harder to quantify.
Who to reach
– Project insiders: contributors and community members who already appreciate why sponsorship matters.
– Companies close to contributing: organizations that depend heavily on WordPress but need help translating that reliance into sponsorship actions.
– The general public: people unfamiliar with open source funding who can be educated about the benefits and mechanics of sponsorship.
Practical advice for companies
– Start small: set aside a modest initial budget and begin. Waiting for a perfect program often leads to inertia.
– Sponsoring individuals first is often easier than reallocating internal engineering time. It lowers friction and creates visible outcomes quickly.
– Create lightweight processes: simple intake forms, clear selection criteria, tracking spreadsheets, and a short agreement that sets expectations for deliverables and timelines.
– Keep marketing modest and respectful. Sponsorship should prioritize actual contribution to the project rather than aggressive promotional leverage. Reasonable visibility asks—like a blog post or a short interview—are acceptable if they don’t overshadow project goals.
– Measure and showcase results: document who you sponsor, what they accomplish (merged patches, documentation updates, talks, events), and how those outputs benefit the company.
– Prepare answers for internal skeptics: map sponsorship outcomes to leadership priorities using the strategic, operational, and second-order framework.
Advice for contributors seeking sponsorship
– Don’t just ask for money. Prepare a concise proposal that explains what you will do, how it helps a potential sponsor, and what concrete outcomes to expect.
– Reach out to relevant companies—start with major hosting providers and firms that have shown community interest. Ask whether they have formal programs or offer to help them create one.
– Highlight mentoring and community-building work. Sponsors value contributors who multiply impact by mentoring others and growing participation.
What contributions count
– Valuable contributions extend beyond core code: documentation, translations (Polyglots), event organizing (WordCamps and contributor days), and content like podcasts and videos all improve adoption and usability.
– Choose contribution areas aligned with company priorities—for example, internationalization if your customers are largely non-English-speaking.
Coordination beyond single companies
– Collective models like the WP Community Collective (WPCC) exist to pool funds and distribute support. Consortiums can increase reach but add governance complexity.
– Don’t let the search for a perfect centralized system delay action. Individual organizations can and should start sponsoring contributors now while collaborating where it makes sense.
Internal readiness and timing
– Align sponsorship targets with organizational goals and be patient: approvals may take time, but be ready to act once budget is available.
– Work out operational details in advance: payment methods, legal terms, public mention policies, and expectations about deliverables.
Community tensions and balance
– There is a natural tension between volunteer-driven philanthropy and business-centered sponsorship. Expanding the conversation to include strategic and operational rationales can bring more participants into the ecosystem without displacing existing contributors.
– The objective is to increase resources and participation while preserving the project’s culture and preventing purely commercial domination.
Practical first steps checklist
– Allocate a modest sponsorship budget.
– Build a simple intake and vetting process.
– Identify contribution areas aligned with company goals (core, docs, Polyglots, events).
– Find contributors with demonstrated work and mentoring impact.
– Request modest public-facing content, but prioritize project outcomes.
– Track and report results to leadership.
Final notes
Roger stresses humility and a collaborative attitude: companies should listen, learn, and participate responsibly. Small, respectful sponsorships can produce meaningful benefits for both contributors and businesses while strengthening the WordPress ecosystem.
Contact
Roger is available on LinkedIn to discuss sponsoring contributors, building programs, and collaborating with the community.