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. Sponsorship is not a way for individuals to control the development of the project, but rather a way of ensuring the longevity and overall health of the project.

With the 2009 donations we were able to fund a developer meeting in Vienna, autumn 2009. Users donations, with the co-sponsoring of the Italian GFOSS.it association (a total of 4,000 €/5,700 US $) allowed us to fund travel and accommodation costs of several key developers:

• Tim Sutton
• Martin Dobias
• Carson Farmer
• Borys Jurgiel

Donations thus contributed effectively to the great success of the meeting (see a report).

We encourage you to donate again to the upcoming developer meeting in Pisa, spring 2010. We aim at bringing 15 prominent QGIS developers. To help their participation, we will refund their expenses with an average of 700 €/1,000 US$ each. Our goal is therefore 10,500 €/15,000 US$. See the progess bar below for the amount in € (Euro) we currently obtained and how much we still need to reach our goal:

Funding status for the developer meeting in Pisa in € (Euro):

How can you support the QGIS Development

There are two kinds of financial contributions, we accept:

• sponsorships: a sponsorship is an annual commitment of funds to the project.
• donation: a donation is a once off financial contribution to the QGIS project.

Sponsorship

Sponsors can sponsor Quantum GIS for any amount of money of at least 500 €/700 US$. Sponsorships last one year, after which they may be continued with a new payment, or allowed to lapse. At or above the following levels a sponsor will be designated as being one of the following class:

1. 27,000+ €/39,000 US$: Platinum Sponsor
2. 9,000+ €/13,000 US$: Gold Sponsor
3. 3,000+ €/4,300 US$: Silver Sponsor
4. 500+ €/700 US$: Bronze Sponsor

Donation

Donations can be of any amount, preferably sent through the Make A Donation PayPal link provided in the left-hand menu of this website. Even a small donation can make a big difference and help to reach important project goals!

What is your benefit sponsoring the QGIS Development

Sponsoring the Quantum GIS project provides the following benefits:

1. Ensures the sustainability and health of the QGIS project.
2. All sponsors will be listed on the project sponsor page, ordered by contribution class (Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze) with a link back to the sponsor.
   
   • Platinum Sponsors will have their logo placed on rotating banner on front page of qgis.osgeo.org
   • Gold Sponsors will be listed on the sponsors page with a large logo (e.g. 300x200px)
   • Silver sponsors will be listed on the sponsors page with a medium size logo (e.g. 150x100px)
   • Bronze sponsors will be listed on the sponsors page with a small size logo (e.g. 64x64px)
3. Sponsors will be listed in the front matter of the QGIS manual
4. Sponsors will be allowed to use a special version of the QGIS logo on their web site and promotional materials, which shows they are a sponsor of the QGIS project
5. Donors will be listed on the sponsors page, but do not receive the additional benefits listed above for sponsors

No advertising will be placed within the QGIS application itself.

How do we use financial support

The sponsorship funds will be spent to directly improve the code base of the project, to fund tasks that generally receive less attention from developers, and to fund work on peripheral project tasks so that core contributors can focus efforts on QGIS improvements. As an example, we would like to fund the following project activities:

• fund developers to work on specific aspects of QGIS including implementing new features and fixing bugs
• an annual QGIS Developer Meeting where we can meet in person and brainstorm, fix bugs and hold a week of intensive QGIS development work. Most QGIS developers will happily donate their time to such events, but we are looking for sponsors to cover travel, accommodation and subsistence costs for these events.
• attendance to other conferences. There are several high profile conferences held each year (such as the http://www.foss4g.org), and we would like to be able to fund QGIS team members to represent QGIS at important conferences, to promote it among users and raise interest and solicit code contributions from other developers.

Decisions on spending of sponsorship funds will be made by the QGIS Project Steering Committee.

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.

Organizations or individuals interested in sponsoring the QGIS project should contact the QGIS PSC Finance and Marketing advisor, Paolo Cavallini at: cavallini at faunalia dot it (+39-348-3801953) with questions, or to make arrangements.