Daniel, Thanks for reaching out! The policy stuff you are looking for is likely the Targeted Donations program[1], which is run by Fundraising. You would by no means be the first project supported this way. But start with the legal mechanics there (Hero Devs has been involved quite a bit lately with Apache, so they'll be familiar with lots of the details). The invoice to Hero Devs will include all the details about how to do the payment. Contact [email protected] for more details on this part, as well as the legal agreements stuff.
Several other projects have spent targeted donations like this on hackathons, as well as other local "gathering of interested parties" around a particular project. In at least one recent case, that included funding speakers's expenses to come talk at such gatherings. >From the mechanics point of view, after the legal stuff has been done (and payment received, which shows up in money in the bank, and a liability to pay for authorized services, on our balance sheet), the usual practice looks like this: * The PMC approves one (or more) folks authorized to spend funds on behalf of your project. The presumption is that you folks will decide where you want the funds to be spent, and that the authorized folks will follow your (PMC) rules. Apache-wide, it's more about making sure we don't jeopardize our 501(c)3 non-profit status in the US -- again, Fundraising is your best resource for dealing with specifics. * Typically, we (Treasury) will authorize one or more "Ramp Cards" (a virtual or physical credit card) to the authorized folks, who can then use the card(s) to pay for expenditures that benefit the project. Any expenditure over $300 will require a receipt to be submitted, but that doesn't block paying whoever the vendor is. * For large expenditures, or where the vendor is willing to grant us credit, we can set them up as a payable vendor in bill.com - our accounts payable system. For those kinds of expenditures, the authorizing PMC member will be added to bill.com as an "approver" to verify that this expenditure was agreed to. Then, after approval, Treasury will schedule the payment. Congrats on being up for this kind of benefit! [1] https://www.apache.org/foundation/docs/targeted-sponsorship-policy.html Craig McClanahan Treasurer, The Apache Software Foundation On Wed, Nov 12, 2025 at 12:39 PM Daniel Sahlberg <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Craig, > > Reaching out privately for advice about the appropriate forum to ask about > this. > > Subversion, same as a bunch of other projects according to mailing list > archives, has been approached by Hero Devs about joining the Open Source > Sustainability fund. According to a later e-mail, we have received a grant > of 5000 USD. > > I'd like to ask how to go ahead with this. I suppose I should ask this in > some mailing list but I don't know which, hoping you can help me here or > direct me to existing documentation. > > 1. The want to pay the money to a bank account and want to know the > account number. I know this sounds very much like phishing ... :-) How > would we normally go about this? > > 2. I know we can't spend money directly to pay for developer's time. Are > there any other restrictions? I assume we can spend it on direct costs (a > hackathon has ben mentioned - so we would spend money on hotels/food/venue > and possibly travel assistance). > > 3. How do we access the money after we've approved costs? Sending receipts > to treasurer? Any formal requirements? > > 4. Anything else I should ask about? > > Since many PMCs probably have the same questions, maybe the board should > make sure some information is published for all PMCs. > > Again - if you feel there is a better place to ask these questions, I'm > happy to do so. > > Kind regards, > Daniel Sahlberg > (Subversion PMC member) >
