[MatthiasPortzel]

If you look at “real” non-profits, there are a couple of key things that are largely missing from Open Source fundraising today.

First is capital campaigns. A capital campaign is a campaign to raise a large amount of money towards a goal. E.g. “we need 3 million dollars by the end of the year for our building renovations.” Having a concrete target is more motivating that just asking for “whatever you can give” to “keep the lights on.”

Second is cultivating relationships with (large) individual donors. It makes sense to track people who have donated to you, send them thank you cards, and take the biggest donors out to lunch. Then when you need money and you’re running your capital campaign, you can ask previous donors for larger contributions. It’s not cold-emailing, because you have a previous relationship with your donors.

Today, open source funding looks more like begging with a sign—sitting in a prominent place and asking for a small amount of money from a lot of people. Nothing wrong with that, you can get enough to eat, but I’d like to see free and open source software try more sustainable and effective strategies.

[ljm]

I did some work like this back in the day, on the side while doing my normal software dev day job.

It's another acquired skill that you don't get just because you're an excellent programmer. On that basis, adding a donation prompt when installing the package is I think a valid attempt at solving the problem, but it's a solution coming from a developer mindset not a fundraiser mindset; if you code it they will come, all that.

If you had the capital you'd hire someone to help with this or find a suitable volunteer with a goal to making it paid.