NEP 46 — NumPy sponsorship guidelines — NumPy Enhancement Proposals

Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers@gmail.com>
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/numpy-discussion/2021-January/081424.html
This NEP provides guidelines on how the NumPy project will acknowledge financial and in-kind support.
In the past few years, the NumPy project has gotten significant financial support, as well as dedicated work time for maintainers to work on NumPy. There is a need to acknowledge that support - it’s the right thing to do, it’s helpful when looking for new funding, and funders and organizations expect or require it, Furthermore, having a clear policy for how NumPy acknowledges support is helpful when searching for new support. Finally, this policy may help set reasonable expectations for potential funders.
This NEP is aimed at both the NumPy community - who can use it as a guideline when looking for support on behalf of the project and when acknowledging existing support - and at past, current and prospective sponsors, who often want or need to know what they get in return for their support other than a healthier NumPy.
The scope of this proposal includes:
direct financial support, employers providing paid time for NumPy maintainers and regular contributors, and in-kind support such as free hardware resources or services,
where and how NumPy acknowledges support (e.g., logo placement on the website),
the amount and duration of support which leads to acknowledgement, and
who in the NumPy project is responsible for sponsorship related topics, and how to contact them.
There will be two different ways to acknowledge financial and in-kind support: one to recognize significant active support, and another one to recognize support received in the past and smaller amounts of support.
Entities who fall under “significant active supporter” we’ll call Sponsor. The minimum level of support given to NumPy to be considered a Sponsor are:
$30,000/yr for unrestricted financial contributions (e.g., donations)
$60,000/yr for financial contributions for a particular purpose (e.g., grants)
$100,000/yr for in-kind contributions (e.g., time for employees to contribute)
We define support being active as:
for a one-off donation: it was received within the previous 12 months,
for recurring or financial or in-kind contributions: they should be ongoing.
After support moves from “active” to “inactive” status, the acknowledgement will be left in its place for at least another 6 months. If appropriate, the funding team can discuss opportunities for renewal with the sponsor. After those 6 months, acknowledgement may be moved to the historical overview. The exact timing of this move is at the discretion of the funding team, because there may be reasons to keep it in the more prominent place for longer.
The rationale for the above funding levels is that unrestricted financial contributions are typically the most valuable for the project, and the hardest to obtain. The opposite is true for in-kind contributions. The dollar value of the levels also reflect that NumPy’s needs have grown to the point where we need multiple paid developers in order to effectively support our user base and continue to move the project forward. Financial support at or above these levels is needed to be able to make a significant difference.
Sponsors will get acknowledged through:
a small logo displayed on the front page of the NumPy website
prominent logo placement on https://numpy.org/about/
logos displayed in talks about NumPy by maintainers
announcements of the sponsorship on the NumPy mailing list
In addition to Sponsors, we already have the concept of Institutional Partner (defined in NumPy’s governance document), for entities who employ a NumPy maintainer and let them work on NumPy as part of their official duties. The governance document doesn’t currently define a minimum amount of paid maintainer time needed to be considered for partnership. Therefore we propose that level here, roughly in line with the sponsorship levels:
6 person-months/yr of paid work time for one or more NumPy maintainers or regular contributors to any NumPy team or activity
Institutional Partners get the same benefits as Sponsors, in addition to what is specified in the NumPy governance document.
Finally, a new page on the website (https://numpy.org/funding/, linked from the About page) will be added to acknowledge all current and previous sponsors, partners, and any other entities and individuals who provided $5,000 or more of financial or in-kind support. This page will include relevant details of support (dates, amounts, names, and purpose); no logos will be used on this page. Such support, if provided for a specific enhancements or fix, may be acknowledged in the appropriate release note snippet. The rationale for the $5,000 minimum level is to keep the amount of work maintaining the page reasonable; the level is the equivalent of, e.g., one GSoC or a person-week’s worth of engineering time in a Western country, which seems like a reasonable lower limit.
The following content changes need to be made:
Add a section with small logos towards the bottom of the numpy.org website.
Create a full list of historical and current support and deploy it to https://numpy.org/funding.
Update the NumPy governance document for changes to Institutional Partner eligibility requirements and benefits.
Update https://numpy.org/about with details on how to get in touch with the NumPy project about sponsorship related matters (see next section).
At the moment NumPy has only one official body, the Steering Council, and no good way to get in touch with either that body or any person or group responsible for funding and sponsorship related matters. The way this is typically done now is to somehow find the personal email of a maintainer, and email them in private. There is a need to organize this more transparently - a potential sponsor isn’t likely to inquire through the mailing list, nor is it easy for a potential sponsor to know if they’re reaching out to the right person in