The Nano Collective is a community-led group of developers, designers, and maintainers building open-source AI tools for the people who use them. We build not for profit, but for the community.
Sponsorship funds the people doing the work. The Collective is fiscally hosted by Open Source Collective; every pound, dollar, and sat received is published transparently in real time. Funds go to two places, and only those two: the cost of operating the Collective, and the community fund that pays bounties to OSS contributors. Full terms are in the Economics Charter.
The sponsorship program is newly launched. Most spots below are still open. The first organisations in at each tier set the tone for the rest.
Individual sponsors are listed automatically via Open Collective as they join. Bespoke partnership spots are open: open a conversation.
AI is becoming the most personal piece of infrastructure most people use: the place they think out loud, work through problems, and hand off real parts of their workflow. The systems people are coming to depend on are largely owned by a small number of companies whose incentives are not aligned with the people using them.
The Nano Collective exists because the alternative needs to be built deliberately, in the open, by people who care about getting it right. Sponsorship is how that work gets funded.
The Collective ships four open-source projects, with 89,640 total npm downloads to date across them. Our sites draw 23,723 monthly visitors across nanocollective.org and our docs. Live download counts, release history, and growth statistics are published at nanocollective.org/growth.
A small, deliberately simple program. Same rule across every tier: more support = more surfaces, whether that support is cash or in-kind resources valued at their fair equivalent. No exclusivity, no slot caps, no influence over the roadmap. Sponsors fund the work; the Collective directs it.
For individuals who want to support recurringly.
For companies, indie teams, and small SaaS that want a visible association with the Collective.
For infrastructure companies, hosting providers, and aligned foundations that want sustained visibility across every Nano Collective surface.
For organisations interested in a larger or named arrangement: publicly named partnership, joint content, a direct relationship with the core team, or anything outside the standard tiers. Designed case by case. Terms are agreed and published before the relationship begins.
To see exactly what your support reaches and how contributors and project proposers access it, see Contributor Resources.
Sponsorship does not have to be money. We welcome non-cash support such as cloud and API credits, compute, software licenses, hardware, and other resources that help our contributors build. There is no Open Collective sign-up for in-kind support, since no money changes hands.
Reach out and we will work out together what your contribution gets you in return, recognised on the same basis as the tiers above.
Annual prepayments at any tier receive a 10% discount. Invoice-based contributions are supported via Open Source Collective. Contact us to set this up.
Any amount, one time, into the community fund. No perks attached, no need to reach out. Donate directly on Open Collective, or send Bitcoin to the Nano Collective wallet.
A specific piece of work, scoped and agreed with the core team before the donation is accepted. Nothing is open-ended. Nothing is retrospective. You know what the work is and how it will be delivered before the donation is made. Delivery is reported publicly.
The program is new; there are no completed examples to cite yet. The first delivered designated donation will be the first listed here.
Scope a designated donationThe Nano Collective reserves the right to decline any sponsorship. We will decline if a prospective sponsor's stated mission, product, or public conduct conflicts materially with what the Collective is building: privacy-respecting, local-first, open AI tooling. Declining is not a moral judgement; it is a recognition that some associations would undermine the work for everyone else who participates. Decisions are made by the core team and are not appealable.
The Nano Collective is fiscally hosted by Open Source Collective. All incoming and outgoing fiat payments are visible on the public Open Collective ledger in real time. Bitcoin donations to the published Nano Collective wallet address are verifiable on-chain.
For exactly how funds reach contributors, see the Economics Charter. For sponsorship operations, including logo specifications and the onboarding process, see Support the Collective.