Our Mission
The Open Source Endowment (OSE) is a community endowment dedicated to sustaining the critical open source projects the world relies on.
We aim to solve the open source maintenance crisis with a new funding solution that is truly sustainable, systemic, and efficient.
Our cornerstone is the endowment model, which top universities have successfully used for centuries. However, this approach had never been applied to open source before OSE.
Founded in 2025 by a diverse group of tech founders, executives, investors, and engineers, OSE is a lean next-gen nonprofit. It's designed as a scalable tool for the tech community to support the public good they care about.
Governance
Open Source Endowment Foundation is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) US public charity with a global focus. Its bottom-up governance is inspired by the best universities and revolves around passionate people with "skin in the game," not corporations.
We strive to meet best-in-class standards of neutrality, transparency, and efficiency.
92Donors
OSE welcomes all individual and institutional donors who would like to leave a lasting impact on the open source ecosystem and improve its sustainability.
The donor list is fully open and regularly updated.
56Members
Donors contributing at least $1,000/year qualify as Members, are invited to advise the board on key matters like the grant model, participate in closed events, and appoint board directors.
Members' rights are legally defined in the membership policy.
3Board Directors
The Board of Directors is our main governing body, appointing both the Executive Director for operational management and Advisors.
By design, all Directors must also be Members. More details on the board election can be found in the bylaws.
Team
Board of Directors
Konstantin Vinogradov
ChairmanVC investor in open source, AI and infra software. Former General Partner at Runa Capital ($600M+ AUM). Creator and maintainer of the ROSS Index (2020-2025), a quarterly data-driven index of open-source startups.
Chad Whitacre
SecretaryHead of Open Source at Sentry (used by 4M+ developers), who leads the Open Source Pledge, a cultural initiative to get companies to pay maintainers. Founded open source funding pioneer Gratipay (2012–2018).
Maxim Konovalov
TreasurerCo-founder and former CTO at Nginx, the world's leading web server used by 400M+ websites, which was acquired for ~$700M in 2019. Former VP Engineering at F5. Long-time contributor to FreeBSD.
Staff & Advisors
Jonathan Starr
Executive DirectorFormer Program Manager at NumFOCUS, a nonprofit supporting scientific OSS such as Pandas. Co-Founder of SciOS and The Institute of Open Science Practices, focusing on sustainable open science.
Amy Parker
AdvisorDeputy Executive Director at the OpenSSL Foundation and former Director of the Wikipedia Endowment. Served as Director of Individual Giving at the Smithsonian and the New York Public Library.
Vlad-Stefan Harbuz
AdvisorMaintainer of the Open Source Pledge. Core developer of OSS funding service thanks.dev. Helped build software used by the Gates Foundation to allocate $1B in healthcare funding.
Looking to contribute to the Open Source Endowment and join our volunteer team as an advisor or board member? Please contact us.
How we fund Open Source
We strive to support the most critical yet underfunded open source projects, sustainably addressing gaps in the OSS funding landscape.
Open Model
There is no perfect model for OSS grants. Our approach is an open data-driven model that is developed and approved by OSE Members — the people who actually power it with funding.
Deep Infrastructure
Our target model will trace links from popular ecosystems (like Python and JavaScript) to underlying packages, creating a natural priority for low-level libraries (written in e.g. C and Fortran).
Independent FOSS
We support only nonprofit projects without corporate ties or associated startups — e.g. not Kubernetes or Sentry. Our ideal grantee looks like a random person in Nebraska.
Framework
Within each ecosystem, we use a model based on Value and Risk scores. They are calculated based on multiple open data points and are used to sort projects. Our target format is microgrants (~$5,000) to high-risk candidates among the most valuable OSS, approved by the board after manual due diligence.
Value
Risk
› Nominate OSS projects for our first funding round in Q2 2026 ‹
Investing strategy
All donations to the Endowment are put into diversified investments, and only the yearly income from these investments is used to fund grants. This approach supports long-term planning and sustainable funding for OSS.
At the start, OSE invested in US Treasury bonds, which are very low-risk and earn ~5% per year. Now, the portfolio is being transferred to a professional asset manager, Infinite Giving, chosen by the board thanks to its US nonprofit specialization.
Targeting a 7-8% return with 5% annual spend on grants, most of the remaining earnings will be reinvested after covering operating costs.
