Consider this as a nonprofit startup that has just raised a pre-seed round. The current size of $700K is indeed immaterial, as our plan is to scale it significantly in the coming years.

The closest real-world comparable to what we are building is the Wikimedia Endowment, whose former Director is among OSE’s advisors. Like Wikimedia, we aim to be supported not only by large donations but also by contributions from large community — in our case, 150M+ GitHub users.

Our target audience is diverse - from highly successful founders to everyday developers. The Open Source Endowment is prepared to accept donations in both cash and stock from these groups.

While 5% of equity may be too much, 1% seems achievable. I am personally ready to commit 1% of the carried interest from my own VC fund to the endowment.