Introducing a New Sliding Scale Membership

The Python Software Foundation (PSF) has made a sliding scale option available for Supporting Membership, because we want to make membership more accessible for more people and to increase the size and diversity of our voting membership. New Supporting Members can join the PSF for as little as $25. Our goal is to make our Membership program more accessible to Supporters who live in a country with lower average incomes than the US or Western Europe or those who are currently students or are currently unemployed or under-employed. We are relying on Members to self-select their rate, so anyone who finds our suggested $99 membership rate a financial burden can choose a Membership rate that works for them, starting at $25.

Part of our mission at the PSF is to “facilitate the growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmers.” Our community Grants Program and our Travel Grants for PyCon US have paved the way for a lot of growth, both internationally and amongst populations that are otherwise under-indexed in Python specifically, and open source generally. One area where this outreach hasn’t “trickled up” as much as we’d like is our leadership. Supporting Members can vote for our Board of Directors. If our roster of voting members can more accurately represent the entire Python community, then we can more reasonably expect the make-up of the Board to follow.

There are of course many other things we could consider doing to increase the diversity of the Python community. We welcome your thoughts on how we can continue to improve.

In the meantime, our annual membership and fundraising drive is happening right now and we hope that you will consider becoming a Supporting Member at $25, $99, or anything in between (or more if you have the means.) A second task you could do to support our membership drive is to share it on social media or with your friends and colleagues who use Python. We prefer to rely on word of mouth, rather than purchasing leads or haunting people with ads all over the internet, so thanks in advance for your help!