Donate to help make Plone Sprints possible!

Help the advancement of Plone!

Have you ever wondered how you could contribute to the future of Plone?  One way to help is to attend a Sprint, which is a concentrated development effort, hosted by various groups all around the world.  Since the first Sprint back in 2002, we have found them to be very successful and extremely valuable not only to the development of Plone, but also to the experience, knowledge and growth of the development community.  We would like to continue to offer this type of event to people who want to contribute and make a difference, but not everyone can attend a Sprint for financial or logistical reasons. 

So, by donating to Plone, you can help spring Plone into the future. 

The money you donate will go directly to helping Sprint attendees contribute to Plone and the associated products that Plone relies on every day.  Donating even a small amount will help us! Individuals and businesses who donate will be listed on the site and given thanks and recognition for their contributions.

But what will money do to help?

Many people have never considered the cost of a Sprint. How about the investment put in by the Sprinters?  If we add up all of the costs, travel, lodging, food and transportation, the cost would be roughly:

 € 10,000 - Actual Sprint cost
 €  5,000 - Lovely Systems and Telesis preparation costs (not payed)
 € 20,000 - Estimated travel expenses for Sprinters
 ========
 € 35,000 - Total actual Sprint costs!

This does not include the cost to Sprinters in the form of time off of work.  Most Sprint attendees (who tend to be freelancers or own their own business) are not paid for their time away from work. Imagine a contractor makes €50/hour average, over 7 days, at 8 hours a day. That's €78,400 for 28 developers missing work.  That would bring the total cost of a Sprint to roughly €100,000!!

Why we are trying to raise money:

By asking for your donations, we are not trying to earn money and get rich, but instead to cover the very real expenses incurred by throwing a Sprint.  This includes travel, planning, lodging, food, connectivity (net access).  We are trying to help out the developers who have come from all over the world to contribute to Plone.

What does an investment in Plone mean?

You might ask, "Why should I donate to a Sprint? What are you guys doing anyways?" A Sprint is a very focused and intense development period.  We are working to make Plone easier to use, more powerful and faster to develop and deploy new systems with.  Sometimes, a Sprint is the only time a developers can make serious headway on a Plone Product.  Many Sprinters are working on other projects for their clients throughout the year and may not have time to sit down and put the finishing touches on their Plone contribution.  By hosting Sprints, we provide the opportunity to further development of Plone's core applications, make the system more stable and robust, squash bugs, write documentation and build tools that make Plone easier to use, maintain and develop for.  Also, developers working directly with other developers results in intensive knowledge sharing; everyone learns skills, tips and tricks from each other. 

Here is a list of the projects Sprinters were working during Snow Sprint 2, in Austria:

Event system for Plone
i18n/l10n improvements
ATContentTypes for Plone 2.1
Plone on CMF 1.5
ArcheTypes 1.3.2 release
ArcheTypes 1.3.x documentation
CMFMember release
ArcheTypes 1.4 beta development
TeamSpaces release
ArchGenXML development and documentation
CMFEditions improvements
Calendaring improvements</pre>

Where will my donation go, what will you do with the money?

Donations to Plone Sprints will be evenly distributed to the Sprinters for their travel expenses.  Money may also go to reimburse Sprinters who paid the €450 price to attend the Sprint. 

So, please take a moment to donate any amount that you feel you can spare.  Every donation, no matter how small, makes this mainly volunteer-driven, Open Source CMS as robust and rich as possible.  Plone and the Plone community sincerely thank you for your contribution to help make future Sprints possible.  Your contributions make a difference!