💵 Financial report (2025-04)

[ldez]

Details about donation platforms and fees

Open Collective is the fiscal host for golangci-lint.

The GitHub Sponsors donations are transferred automatically to Open Collective on the 22nd of each month (Open Collective receives them on the 26th).
All donations after the 22nd are transferred the next month. I don't control this date.
The first recurring donation or recurring donation changes can be prorated depending on the billing cycle: for example, a $2 donation can become $0.97/$0.77/$-1.03/... (yes, it can be a negative number)
This explains why there are decimal numbers even if donations are integers.

The thanks.dev platform is only related to dependencies, as golangci-lint is a tool and not a library, the system is not adapted for the project.
The donations seem to appear randomly inside the interface.
The thanks.dev donations are not transferred automatically to Open Collective.
When I will transfer them, fees will be applied, but they are not a part of this report as I don't know them for now.

There are fees on transactions, this is related to payment platforms like Stripe, PayPal, and Open Collective.
You can see the details of the fees on golangci-lint profile on Open Collective

I live in France, I should convert USD to EUR (currently $1 is between 0.87€ and 0.88€).
I should also pay taxes: I don't know exactly how many, but it is at least 22%.

Here is the financial data (extracted from Open Collective and thank.dev).
I only keep the last 3 months for better readability.

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Donation platform balances:

	2025-02	2025-03	2025-04		AVG (3 months)	AVG (one year)
GitHub Sponsors	$3428.80	$291.89	$1219.54		$1646.74	$314.12
Open Collective	$10.00	$32	$19		$20.33	$4.88
Thanks.dev	$4.63	$4.63	$22.38		$10.55	$2.31
Total	$3443.43	$308.52	$1260.92		$1677.62	$321.31
Fee	$-344.99	$-35.07	$-126.19		$-168.75	$-32.40
Total	$3098.44	$273.45	$1134.73		$1508.87	$288.91

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Theoretical Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) explanation

The theoretical Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is related to recurring donations only and does not consider prorated amounts, fees, taxes, etc.
So those numbers are higher than the reality.

The theoretical MRR is important because it is a good indicator of growth and sustainability.

The numbers, related to GitHub Sponsors, are from the ~22nd of a month to the ~22nd of the next month (take a look at the section "Details about donation platforms and fees" for the explanation of this range)

Golangci-lint theoretical MRR:

	2025-02	2025-03	2025-04
Theoretical MRR	$232	$358	$1007

My personal (related to different OSS I maintain) theoretical MRR:

	2025-02	2025-03	2025-04
Theoretical MRR	$87	$97	$145

The situation improves gradually, but this is still not sustainable.
I will provide more details in a comment.

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We have four new recurring corporate donors, this is great news!

I'm still looking to contact companies that use golangci-lint.
If you have any contacts to share, don't hesitate to get in touch with me in DM on the social networks, Gopher Slack, or by email (info at golangci dot com).

No news about OSS funding programs, but I'm working to apply to the FLOSS fund.

To all current, new, and future donors: thank you ❤️

• Donate ❤️: 2€ /_$2 / 2£ / 350円 / 15元 / 100₴ / 200₽ / 1500원 / 12 B$ per month is important
  • golangci-lint
  • ldez
• Ask your company to donate (if needed, we can exchange by email: info at golangci dot com)
  • golangci-lint
  • ldez

OSS are free to use but not free of work.

[ldez]

Some people asked me, in DM, if there is a difference between the donation platforms.

I'm not an accountant, I think I don't have the right naming, and information about fees is incomplete (because fees related to payment providers are cryptic), but I will do my best to transmit what I understand or found.

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Fees, Taxes, Exchange Rate

	Type	Fees
GitHub Sponsors (GHS)	Donation platform	no fee
Open Collective (OC)	Donation platform	no fee
Open Source Collective (OSC)	Fiscal host	10% + Wise transfer fee
Wise transfer fee related to OSC	Transfer processor	Depending on the transferred amount of money (between 90% and 0.4%), I will use an approximation of 0.55% (~$1000 transferred).
Thanks.dev	Donation platform	The fees are paid by donors (I don't know the numbers) The official explanation is not clear about transfer costs: "GitHub Sponsors charges 3% + 3% fees and Open Collective incurs $0.39 in transfer fees associated with Wise."
PayPal	Payment processor	4.99% + $0.49 (Paypal checkout/guest checkout) 3.49% + $0.49 (charity)
Stripe	Payment processor	2.9% + $0.30 (standard) 4.4% + $0.30 (?)
USD to EUR	Exchange rate	0.88 (2025-04-29)
Tax	Country	~25% monthly

This table is based on documentation (if it exists) and my analysis of the current donations.

Formulas

$$afterFees = donation - paymentProcessorFees - hostFee$$

$$effectiveIncomes = (\sum{afterFees} - tranferCost) * exchange)*(1-taxRate)$$

Examples

Those examples are just here for the illustration: Wise, exchange, tax should be applied on the total and not per donation.
But I didn't find a better way to represent that data.

$2

	OC (Paypal US)	OC (Paypal US)	OC (Stripe US)	OC (Stripe US)	Thanks.dev (GHS)	Thanks.dev (OC)	GHS
Donation	$2	$2	$2	$2	$2	$2	$2
Fee Rate	4.99%	3.49%	4.4%	2.9%	6%	0%	0%
Fixed Fee	$0.49	$0.49	$0.3	$0.3	$0	$0.39	$0
Host Fee	10%	10%	10%	10%	10%	10%	10%
After Fees	$1.21	$1.24	$1.41	$1.44	$1.68	$1.41	$1.80
% After Fee	60.51%	62.01%	70.60%	72.10%	84.00%	70.50%	90.00%
Wise	0.55%	0.55%	0.55%	0.55%	0.55%	0.55%	0.55%
Exchange	0.88	0.88	0.88	0.88	0.88	0.88	0.88
Tax	25%	25%	25%	25%	25%	25%	25%
Eff. Inc.	0.80€	0.82€	0.93€	0.95€	1.11€	0.93€	1.19€
%	39.93%	40.92%	46.59%	47.58%	55.43%	46.52%	59.39%

$20

	OC (Paypal US)	OC (Paypal US)	OC (Stripe US)	OC (Stripe US)	Thanks.dev (GHS)	Thanks.dev (OC)	GHS
Donation	$20	$20	$20	$20	$20	$20	$20
Fee Rate	4.99%	3.49%	4.4%	2.9%	6%	0%	0%
Fixed Fee	$0.49	$0.49	$0.3	$0.3	$0	$0.39	$0
Host Fee	10%	10%	10%	10%	10%	10%	10%
After Fees	$16.51	$16.81	$16.82	$17.12	$16.80	$17.61	$18.00
% After Fee	82.56%	84.06%	84.10%	85.60%	84.00%	88.05%	90.00%
Wise	0.55%	0.55%	0.55%	0.55%	0.55%	0.55%	0.55%
Exchange	0.88	0.88	0.88	0.88	0.88	0.88	0.88
Tax	25%	25%	25%	25%	25%	25%	25%
Eff. Inc.	10.90€	11.09€	11.10€	11.30€	11.09€	11.62€	11.88€
%	54.48%	55.47%	55.50%	56.48%	55.43%	58.10%	59.39%

Summary

Between 60.51% and 90% of a donation (>=$2) are received after fees.

Between 39.93% and 59.39% of donations are "effectively" received.

Which is why each donation is crucial.

In some cases, a donation below $2 will result in a huge fee rate of ~64% (because of fixed fees) and so an "effectiveness" of ~24%:

• $1 -> $0.36 -> 0.24 €

This is the reason why I always suggest $2 as a minimum and not lower.

Conclusion

If your donation is under $20 per month, prefer the GitHub Sponsors platform or thanks.dev.

PayPal is costly with its nearly 5% + 0.5$ fee per transaction, especially for small donations, if you can, I recommend avoiding it.

I only explained the golangci-lint money flow, I think I will explain my personal money flow in a dedicated article on my blog.
But the summary is:

• In one year (2024-04 to 2025-04), I received 1125.38 € in total, less than 100 € a month avg.
• The "effectiveness" is between 54.74% and 74.08% (because I'm the fiscal host, and donations can be in €).

Sustainability

I knew it would be challenging, I trust that is possible, but for sure, this is stressful.

For references:

• The minimum legal wage per month in France is about 1500 € after tax.
• The official poverty threshold in France is about 1200 € per month after tax.

To have the minimum wage, monthly donations should be at least:

• $2525.68 ((1500*100)/59.39), if donations are on the platforms related golangci-lint.
• or $2024.84 ((1500*100)/74.08), if donations are on the platforms related to me directly.

I have had no income since December 2024, so I need to pay myself this month to pay for the basics (rent, electricity, water, and the Internet + tax) for one month (the transaction will be public on the Open Collective platform).

Don't hesitate if you have questions.

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You can help OSS ecosystem by spreading the message inside your company, on social networks, or financially.

If you have any contacts to share, don't hesitate to get in touch with me in DM on the social networks, Gopher Slack, or by email (info at golangci dot com).

• Donate ❤️: 2€ /_$2 / 2£ / 350円 / 15元 / 100₴ / 200₽ / 1500원 / 12 B$ per month is important
  • golangci-lint
  • ldez
• Ask your company to donate (if needed, we can exchange by email: info at golangci dot com)
  • golangci-lint
  • ldez