Yoast Care fund
We value everybody who contributes to WordPress and wish to reward everyone who does so. Of course, we can’t hire everyone, but we can help some people by giving them a gift of $500,- and an interview to say thank you for their time and effort. You can help us with finding those awesome contributors! Nominate the people who work so hard to make WordPress even better so we can reward them.
The WordPress community, or even better, our WordPress community, is made of thousands of volunteers world-wide. Together we write the code, test the patches, translate the software and organize the events that make this community to what it is today; a friendly and welcoming environment for all.
Many of those volunteers work on WordPress in their free time, or while self-employed. This means they’re really making WordPress better out of the goodness of their hearts. Some of them even work on WordPress so much, they hardly have any time left to make a decent income. All because they care for the project and the Open Source values associated with it.
At Yoast, we love the Open Source way. If we could, we would support all those who are struggling to make ends meet, because they’re working on FOSS. Unfortunately, we can’t.
What we can do – with your help! – is put those who are essential to WordPress’ success in the spotlight. And that’s why we started Yoast Care, the Yoast Community Appreciation REwards. So from now on, every year, Yoast pledges at least $25,000 to Yoast Care. This money will be distributed over the ‘winners’ of Yoast Care (approx. 50 people per year).
But it’s more than just money. A big portion of Yoast Care is a blog post highlighting your contributions to the WordPress community as a public way to say ‘thank you’!
So how does it work?
If you know someone in the WordPress community who does amazing work on WordPress and the WordPress project, you can now nominate this person for Yoast Care. This means you have to fill out the form below explaining why you think this person deserves Yoast Care. At Yoast, we’ll review all applications. Every application has an equal chance to be rewarded, as long as the nominee has contributed to WordPress.
When a nominee makes it to the second round, the nominator conducts an interview with the nominee that will later be published on yoast.com.
The conditions
- Because Yoast is part of a US-based company (Newfold Digital), we must comply with US laws, including OFAC requirements. Therefore we will need to do an OFAC check on both the nominee and nominator.
- Your nominee hasn’t received Yoast Care in the past 15 months.
- Your nominee doesn’t get paid for their work on WordPress. If you do awesome paid work, it’s your job.
- Your nominee has to be active in a Make WordPress team, as a WordCamp organizer or an officially accredited WordPress meetup. Getting you coffee at a WordCamp just isn’t enough.
- Obvious one; you can not nominate yourself. Don’t bother. Won’t work. ;-)
- If you nominate someone 16 or under, please do realize that we need permission from their caretakers before we can make them (relatively) rich.
- You need to have at least three references (who gave permission!)
- Legal speak: A nomination is not a guarantee for selection, Yoast decides who gets the glory.