What donations can be used for:
1. Merchandise & promo materials
Items that are given away for free, or given in return for a donation equal to or bigger than the costs. Some items might be given away only in specific situations or under specific conditions. Only expenses of items whose environmental impact have been taken into consideration (e.g. GOTS certification for clothing).
Examples & Ideas
Stickers, branded headphones, socks, t-shirts and/or hoodies.
Products may be given to contributors/community members free of charge in these cases:
- Developer who closed most issues in the last month
- Translator who continuously contributed for the longest time
- Forum member who posted most “accepted answers” in the last month
- Developer who fix a highly voted on issue
- Tech conferences (especially stickers)
2. Presentation materials
Materials like posters or roll-up banners, only when needed for a specific event. Expenses for digital products (e.g. advertising space) are not accepted.
3. Project running
Foreseen services or products to (help) keep the project going, and unexpected costs that are strictly necessary for the project.
Examples of foreseen costs
- domain name
- forum server
- Google Play developer account one-time fee for new project leads
Examples of unexpected costs
- (defensive) legal lawsuits
- spiking hosting loads
- costs incurred by a forced hosting provider switch
4. Community gatherings
Products and services that support community-building during community gatherings (e.g. food & drinks for a meeting at FOSDEM). Expenses accepted only if 5 or more people signed up and show up at the gathering, and only if the gathering was announced to the community at least 2 weeks in advance.
5. Upstream & Peer contributions
Projects that contribute to an open podcasting ecosystem or an open source Android ecosystem may be given donations from AntennaPod’s funds.
Examples & Ideas
General principles
- Expenses should be proposed to and discussed with the community on AntennaPod’s forum. If the expenses have not been discussed and approved beforehand by the community, their reimbursements cannot be guaranteed.
- Expense reimbursements can only be requested by team members and community members with a proven track record.
Examples of a proven track record
- has contributed consistently over a longer time with ideas and/or support on the forum or on GitHub
- has provided many smaller or a few bigger code contributions
- has translated large chunks of the app and/or maintained translations for a long period
What donations can NOT be used for
- Personal expenses or needs
- Buying ads to get more users - at least not in the near future (some argue this goes against the nature of open source)