Organizations or individuals interested in supporting the QGIS project should contact the QGIS treasurer, Andreas Neumann (finance@qgis.org), with questions, requests for becoming a sustaining member, invoices or to make arrangements.
QGIS is an entirely Open Source project. QGIS development is carried out largely by a group of volunteers, that in time have built up a large, valuable and useful code base, free to use and improve for everybody. As a result, you have free access to the source code and binaries that we provide on our web site. As a result of this volunteer approach, a number of tasks, less interesting or important for the developers, are sometimes left behind. In addition, promoting QGIS requires our participation at congresses and conferences and the production of information material, sometimes very expensive for volunteer developers.
Meanwhile, many organizations have made an investment in using QGIS as part of their operations, but have not had a way to directly contribute to the success and long-term health of the project.
We would like to extend our activities and improve the quality of QGIS. Your financial contribution will support the maintenance, improvement, and promotion of QGIS. Becoming a sustaining member is a way of ensuring the longevity and overall health of the project.
Note that prior to March 17, 2019, we had a sponsorship program that is now being transitioned to a sustaining membership program in order to make it easier for public authorities to support the QGIS.ORG project by becoming a sustaining member as previously it was difficult or impossible for them to support the project through sponsorships or donations. Financial contributions prior to March 17 are technically regarded as sponsorships, after that date as sustaining memberships.
With your financial contributions we are able to:
keep the QGIS.ORG IT infrastructure up and running. This includes aspects, such as
the QGIS.ORG website
our issue (bug and feature reporting) system
the continuous integration system that tests each change or pull request against a series of automated unit tests
our documentation and API documentation system
packaging QGIS for the various operating systems
fixing bugs and other issues
managing pull requests and do code reviewing
mentoring new contributors
translating QGIS
running our QGIS grant system that allows contributors to work on behind the scenes improvements to the QGIS code base, our infrastructure, documentation or other aspects of our community. Work that otherwise would be hard to do by volunteers only or hard to sell to customers of QGIS development companies
organize and support our contributor meetings and QGIS conferences
QGIS.ORG wants to be transparent with the funds we receive and how we spend them. Please have a look at the financial reports and budgets in our Finance section.
There are two kinds of financial contributions, we accept:
sustaining memberships: a sustaining membership is an annual commitment of funds to the project.
donations: a donation is a once off financial contribution to the QGIS project.
Sustaining members can support QGIS for any amount of money of at least 500 €. Sustaining memberships last one year, after which they may be continued with a new payment, or allowed to lapse. Sustaining members have no voting rights (unless they are simultaneously voting members in which case their voting rights are unaffected). At or above the following levels a sustaining member will be designated as being one of the following category, based on their size and assigned through self declaration:
euros |
membership level |
|---|---|
27,000+ |
Flagship Member (e.g. for companies larger than 100 employees, federal governmental organizations) |
9,000+ |
Large Member (e.g. for larger cities, provinces or companies up to 100 employees) |
3,000+ |
Medium Member (e.g. for universities, medium size cities or companies up to 50 employees) |
500+ |
Small Member (e.g. for smaller cities or companies up to 10 employees) |
Membership fees are approved or changed by the QGIS general assembly. They are defined as minimum fees per category, but may be increased if the sustaining member chooses to do so.
Because QGIS.ORG is a world-wide project and different companies, NGOs or governmental organizations have different financial prospects, we do not enforce any membership levels - the organizations pick their own membership level based on self-assessment.
Acceptance of sustaining members shall be subject to the discretion and approval of The Board, who reserve the right to accept or reject applications for sustaining membership and ongoing support memberships as deemed appropriate.
Donations can be of any amount, via direct transfers to our bank account (SEPA payment), credit card payment (through stripe.com) or Paypal (information available at Donations page). Even a small donation can make a difference and help to reach important project goals!
If you wish to send us a larger donation, you are strongly encouraged to use the direct transfer (SEPA payment) to our bank account. If you wish to use credit card payments, payments through stripe.com are preferred as payment fees are lower than with PayPal. PayPal payments also imply an unnecessary currency conversion (€ to CHF and back to €) for reasons only PayPal understands.
Donations to QGIS are tax-deductible in some countries (e.g. in Germany through the German QGIS user group). Please refer to your local tax office for details.
Supporting the QGIS project as a sustaining member provides the following benefits:
Ensures the sustainability and health of the QGIS project.
Helps with fixing bugs and issues
All sustaining members and donors will be listed on the project Sustaining members and Donors page, ordered by membership category (flagship, large, medium, small) with a link back to the sustaining members organization or company website and the logo in a size reflecting their membership category.
flagship, large and medium sustaining members will have their logo on the QGIS homepage footer banner with a logo size and order reflecting their membership category
sustaining membership logos are listed in the visual changelogs produced for each QGIS software release
sustaining members will be allowed to use a special version of the QGIS logo on their web site and promotional materials, which shows they are supporting the QGIS project
No advertising will be placed within the QGIS application itself.
Donors will be listed on the Sustaining members and Donors page, but do not receive the additional benefits listed above for sustaining members, except for the first two items.
Decisions on spending of funds will be made by the QGIS Project Steering Committee, proposed in a budget that will be approved or declined by the QGIS.ORG general assembly.
Note
We regret that we cannot accept ‘earmarked’ funding as it creates many administrative issues. If you are interested in funding specific aspects of QGIS development, we encourage you to allocate additional human resources to the project, e.g. hiring a developer, or participating to our bug fixing initiative.
Warning
Acceptance of sustaining membership applications is at the discretion of the QGIS PSC. We reserve the right to decline offers of sustaining members if the membership organisation or party seems to be at odds with the ethos of our project. For example offers from marketing companies that have nothing to do with GIS / spatial services, or offers where we have reason to believe the presence of the sustaining member logo and marketing materials on our site and other materials will degrade the experience of our users will be declined.