GitHub Accelerator: our first cohort and what’s next

In November 2022 we announced GitHub Accelerator, an exploration into what sustainable open source could look like. GitHub Accelerator is a 10-week program where open source maintainers receive an initial sponsorship of $20K to work on their project, paired with guidance and workshops from open source leaders, with an end goal of building durable streams of funding for their work. Our goal with the program is to help the maintainers and projects wanting to make full-time career in open source take their first leap.

Today, we’re thrilled to announce GitHub Accelerator’s first cohort! The 2023 cohort has 20 projects, with 32 participants from all over the world, including Argentina, Australia, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, Luxembourg, Pakistan, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the UK, and the US.

We received over 1,000 applications, and had the honor of looking at many incredible projects throughout this process. Thank you so much to everyone who submitted, and especially for your patience as we selected our first cohort, which was no small feat. We wish we could be working with many, many more of you. Thank you to the selection committee who helped guide our choices and broaden our understanding of what topics would be essential to cover. The diversity of projects applying was inspiring: across industries, across the software stack, in project maturity, current funding, and the ultimate goals for sustainability.

Meet the 20 projects in GitHub Accelerator!

The projects cover a wide range of potential open source business models, and while many of the maintainers are looking for a way to sustain their open source work full-time, they have differing goals for what financial stability could look like for them. We’re here to help support projects testing new ways to bring in durable streams of funding for open source—and to help share those learnings back with the community.

During the 10-week GitHub Accelerator, the group will participate in weekly sessions with thought leaders in the open source world, while continuing to focus on building and maintaining their projects. We’ll be discussing open source licensing and governance, setting funding goals, working with companies, getting sponsorships, prioritizing issues, onboarding new contributors, securing your project, managing tough conversations, building partnerships, keeping communities safe, fundraising skills, and more. At the end of the program, we’ll share an update on what we learned from our first experiment in bridge funding and skill building, and what’s next for these projects. We’re looking forward to sharing some of these learnings more widely!

What does open source funding look like for you?

We encourage you to check out the projects above, and think about how you approach supporting the projects that you and your company use. Last week, we also announced that GitHub Sponsors is now available for organization-funded sponsorships, which makes it easier for organizations to sponsor the open source projects they depend on. We also announced bulk sponsorships, a new feature that gives organizations insight into their dependencies and easily sponsor as many of them as they’d like in a single click.

What projects are you relying on? How can you help those projects stay stable and sustainable? Join us as we explore how to nourish a thriving open source ecosystem.

Written by

Kara Sowles

@karasowles

DevRel @ GitHub. Showing open source projects the love!
Twitter: https://twitter.com/feynudibranch