[saulhoward]

I've often thought companies should provide say $500/month for each of their developers to pay out to the open source projects of their choice. One month an employee might give it to Vim, another to Curl. I think a discretionary scheme like that would buy a lot of good will from the employees, potential hires and the development community.

[david_allison]

Google does this (each employee can nominate 3 people for $250 each per round of funding. Recipients are limited to $500/year due to tax) [0]

[0] https://opensource.google/docs/growing/peer-bonus/

[tpoacher]

I initially read that as "Beer Bonus Program"

[pessimizer]

I've always thought that governments should do this to fund the arts in general, and political campaigns. Some of your taxes directed to the recipients of your choice. In the case of the arts, it would of course be a floor, but in the case of political contributions, it could be a ceiling.

[bcherry]

I think this is a good proposal and have also been interested in an expanded version of this where the company donates $X to _any_ profit cause, but directed by the employees. This way you can pay Vim one month and the NAACP or the ACLU the next month.

An easier way to scale this might be to just have a set amount (say $10k/month for a large company) and a recurring ranked-choice poll open to all employees. The funds would be allocated according to the poll, with the winner getting say $5k and the two runner ups getting $3k and $2k or something like that.

This way employees don't have to do the work of submitting donations and filing expenses, as there's just one person at the company who administrates it a few days a month.

[5faulker]

Ultimately it boils down to the difference between traditional business model and the non-profit model.

[_wldu]

Non-profits take in money too (just like for profit companies). The only big difference is they do not profit (money over and above expenses). Employees at non-profits are still paid, receive benefits, etc.