Python is for everyone: Join in the PSF year-end fundraiser & membership drive!

The Python Software Foundation (PSF) is the charitable organization behind Python, dedicated to advancing, supporting, and protecting the Python programming language and the community that sustains it. That mission and cause are more than just words we believe in. Our tiny but mighty team works hard to deliver the projects and services that allow Python to be the thriving, independent, community-driven language it is today. Some of what the PSF does includes producing PyCon US, hosting the Python Package Index (PyPI), supporting 5 Developers-in-Residence, maintaining critical community infrastructure, and more.

Python is for teaching, learning, playing, researching, exploring, creating, working– the list goes on and on and on! Support this year's fundraiser with your donations and memberships to help the PSF, the Python community, and the language stay strong and sustainable. Because Python is for everyone, thanks to you.

There are two direct ways to join through donate.python.org: 

• Donate directly to the PSF! Your donation is a direct way to support and power the future of the Python programming language and community you love. Every donation makes a difference, and we work hard to make a little go a long way.
• Become a PSF Supporting Member! When you sign up as a Supporting Member of the PSF, you become a part of the PSF, are eligible to vote in PSF elections, and help us sustain our mission with your annual support. You can sign up as a Supporting Member at the usual annual rate ($99 USD), or you can take advantage of our sliding scale option (starting at $25 USD)!

 

>>> Donate or Become a Member Today! <<<

 

If you already donated and/or you’re already a member, you can:

• Share the fundraiser with your regional and project-based communities: Share this blog post in your Python-related Discords, Slacks, social media accounts- wherever your Python community is! Keep an eye on our social media accounts to see the latest stories and news for the campaign.
• Share your Python story with a call to action: We invite you to share your personal Python, PyCon, or PSF story. What impact has it made in your life, in your community, in your career? Share your story in a blog post or on your social media platform of choice and add a link to donate.python.org.
• Ask your employer to sponsor: If your company is using Python to build its products and services, check to see if they already sponsor the PSF on our Sponsors page. If not, reach out to your organization's internal decision-makers and impress on them just how important it is for us to power the future of Python together, and send them our sponsor prospectus.

 

Your donations and support:

• Keep Python thriving 
• Support CPython and PyPI progress 
• Increase security across the Python ecosystem 
• Bring the global Python community together 
• Make our community more diverse and robust every year

 

Highlights from 2025:

• Producing another wonderful PyCon US: We welcomed 2,225 attendees for PyCon US 2025– 1,404 of whom were newcomers– at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in beautiful downtown Pittsburgh. PyCon US 2025 was packed with 9 days of content, education, and networking for the Python community, including 6 Keynote Sessions, 91 Talks, including the Charlas Spanish track, 24 Tutorials, 20 Posters, 30+ Sprint Projects, 146 Open Spaces, and 60 Booths! 
• Continuing to enhance Python and PyPI’s security through Developers-in-Residence: The PSF’s PyPI Safety and Security Engineer, Mike Fiedler, has implemented new safeguards, including automation to detect expiring email domains and prevent impersonation attacks, as well as guidance for maintainers to use more secure authentication methods like WebAuthn and Trusted Publishers. The PSF’s Security Developer-in-Residence, Seth Larson, continues to lead efforts to strengthen Python’s security and transparency. His work on PEP 770 introduces standardized Software Bill-of-Materials (SBOMs) within Python packages, improving visibility into dependencies for stronger supply chain security. A new white paper co-authored with Alpha-Omega outlines how these improvements enhance trust and measurability across the ecosystem. 
• Adoption of pypistats.org: The PSF infrastructure team has officially adopted the operation of pypistats.org, which had been run by volunteer Christopher Flynn for over six years (thank you, Christopher!). The PSF’s Infrastructure Team now handles the service’s infrastructure, costs, and domain registration– and the service itself remains open source and community-maintained. 
• Advancing PyPI Organizations: The rollout of PyPI Organizations is now well underway, marking a major milestone in improving project management and collaboration across the Python ecosystem. With new Terms of Service finalized and supporting tools in place, the PSF has cleared its backlog of requests and approved thousands of organizations—including 2,409 Community and 4979 Company organizations as of today. Hundreds of these organizations have already begun adding members, transferring projects, and subscribing to the new Company tier, generating sustainable support for the PSF. We’re excited to see how teams are using these new features to better organize and maintain their projects on PyPI.
• Empowering the Python community through Fiscal Sponsorship: We are proud to continue supporting our 20 fiscal sponsoree organizations with their initiatives and events all year round. The PSF provides 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status to fiscal sponsorees such as PyLadies and Pallets, and provides back office support so they can focus on their missions. Consider donating to your favorite PSF Fiscal Sponsoree and check out our Fiscal Sponsorees page to learn more about what each of these awesome organizations is all about!
• Serving our community with grants: The PSF Grants Program awarded approximately $340K to 86 grantees around the world; supporting local conferences, workshops, and community initiatives that keep Python growing and accessible to all. While we had to make the difficult decision to pause the program early to ensure financial sustainability, we would love to reopen it as soon as possible. Your participation in this year’s fundraiser fuels that effort!
• Honoring community leaders: The PSF honored three leaders with Distinguished Service Awards this year. Ewa Jodlowska helped transform the PSF into a professional, globally supportive organization. Thomas Wouters has contributed decades of leadership, guidance, and institutional knowledge. Van Lindberg provided essential legal expertise that guided the PSF through growth and governance. Their dedication has left a lasting impact on the PSF, Python, and its community. The PSF was also thrilled to recognize Katie McLaughlin, Sarah Kuchinsky, and Rodrigo Girão Serrão with Community Service Awards (CSA) for their outstanding contributions to the Python community. Their dedication, creativity, and generosity embody the spirit of Python and strengthen our global community. We recognized Jay Miller with a CSA for his work to improve diversity, inclusion, and equity in the global Python community through founding and sustaining Black Python Devs. We also honored Matt Lebrun and Micaela Reyes with CSA's for their efforts to grow and support the Python community in the Philippines through conferences, meetups, and volunteer programs.
• Finding strength in the Python community: When the PSF shared the news about turning down a NSF grant, the outpouring of support from the Python community was nothing short of incredible. In just one day, you helped raise over $60K and welcomed 125 new Supporting Members- in the week after, that number jumped to $150K+ and 270+ new Supporting Members! A community-led matching campaign and countless messages of support, solidarity, and encouragement reminded us that while some choices are tough, we never face them alone. The PSF Board & Staff are deeply moved and energized by your words, actions, and continued belief in our shared mission. This moment has set the stage for a record-breaking end-of-year fundraiser, and we are so incredibly grateful to be in community with each of you. 

Connecting the Dots: Understanding the PSF’s Current Financial Outlook

As the PSF heads into our end-of-year fundraiser, we want to share information to help “connect the dots” and show a more complete picture of the PSF’s current financial outlook. You’ve heard from us on subjects related to our financial position from several different angles recently (a list of those posts is below). We’ve prioritized proactive communications, because we believe in transparency, we have trust in our community, and we value keeping you informed— we know how invested in and impacted by our work you are. We now want to pull those threads together in order to create some shared clarity on the big picture, and, hopefully, inspire you to action to support our fundraising efforts.  

The dots

Many groups, organizers, and individuals in the Python community and beyond are experiencing the impacts of the current financial environment, including inflation, reduced sponsorship, economic pressure in the tech sector, and global/local uncertainty and conflict. Unfortunately, the PSF has felt these effects as well, in a number of ways. We’ve been doing our best to share how the current environment impacts our areas of service to the community as the PSF navigates these challenges over the past couple of years:

• PSF Grants Program Changes
• PyCon US 2025 Financial Transparency
• PSF Grants Program Pause
• Open Infrastructure is not Free Joint Statement 
• Our post on the Open Infrastructure is Not Free
• NSF Grant Application Withdrawal

To briefly summarize, the PSF’s assets and yearly revenue have declined, and costs have increased, while the demand and need for our work has continued to multiply. 

Historically, PyCon US has been a source of revenue for the PSF, enabling us to fund programs like our currently paused Grants Program. A PSF-run PyCon US is also an essential program for the PSF to deliver value to our sponsors. Unfortunately, PyCon US has run at a loss for three years—and not from a lack of effort from our staff and volunteers! Everyone has been working very hard to find areas where we can trim costs, but even with those efforts, inflation continues to surge, and changing US and economic conditions have reduced our attendance. Because PyCon US is still a 2000+ person event, we must secure venue contracts for event spaces that can accommodate that number of people, years in advance. Those contracts come with a lot of requirements, such as union labor, required vendors, and many more details (iykyk) that, in the end, amount to a hefty spend.

Meanwhile, Python usage has continued to surge (which is wonderful!), but rather than keep pace, corporate investment back into the language and the community has declined overall. The PSF has longstanding sponsors and partners that we are ever grateful for, but signing on new corporate sponsors has slowed. We have been seeking out alternate revenue channels to diversify our income, with some success and some challenges. PyPI Organizations offers paid features to companies (PyPI features are always free to community groups) and has begun bringing in monthly income. 

We’ve also been seeking out grant opportunities where we find good fits with our mission. We made it far along in one large U.S. Government grant process, but ultimately decided to withdraw our application because it conflicted with our values and mission. The community's supportive response to that decision has been heartening and brought in an unexpected surge of material support totaling $135K+ USD from 1400+ donors, which includes 270+ new PSF members! The PSF is astounded and deeply appreciative at the outpouring of solidarity in both words and actions. This remarkable show of support reminds the us of the community’s strength, and reinforces our resolve in the decision to withdraw from the grant process, even as the $1.5M gap from the grant remains.

Our 2024 Annual Impact Report provides a window on the current economic outlook for the PSF, with a loss in net income and a dip in the growth of assets in 2024. Because we have so few expense categories (the vast majority of our spending goes to running PyCon US, the Grants Program, and our small 13-member staff), we have limited “levers to pull” when it comes to budgeting and long-term sustainability. As you can see from the categories mentioned, each of these expense areas leads directly to the services we provide the community. Additionally, we have several sources of assets with donor restrictions (i.e. earmarked funds), meaning we can’t shift those funds to cover other areas of need. 

 

What does this mean? 

Overall, the PSF is facing significant financial challenges, but we are actively monitoring the situation and taking action where we can. This post is our way of “raising the flag” early and calling in the community proactively. We currently have more than six months of runway (as opposed to our preferred 12 months+ of runway), so the PSF is not at immediate risk of having to make more dramatic changes, but we are on track to face difficult decisions if the situation doesn’t shift in the next year. 

What we’re doing

Based on all of this, the PSF has been making changes and working on multiple fronts to combat losses and work to ensure financial sustainability, in order to continue protecting and serving the community in the long term. Some of these changes and efforts include:

• Pursuing new sponsors, specifically in the AI industry and the security sector
• Increasing sponsorship package pricing to match inflation
• Making adjustments to reduce PyCon US expenses
• Pursuing funding opportunities in the US and Europe
• Working with other organizations to raise awareness
• Strategic planning, to ensure we are maximizing our impact for the community while cultivating mission-aligned revenue channels

The PSF’s end-of-year fundraiser effort is usually run by staff based on their capacity, but this year we have assembled a fundraising team that includes Board members to put some more “oomph” behind the campaign. We’ll be doing our regular fundraising activities; we’ll also be creating a unique webpage, piloting temporary and VERY visible pop-ups to python.org and PyPI.org, and telling more stories from our Grants Program recipients. 

What you can do

So, what can you do to help us gain sponsors to ensure critical infrastructure, our community, and more can stay supported and sustainable?

1. If your company is using Python to build its products and services, check to see if they already sponsor the PSF on our Sponsors page.
2. If not, reach out to your organization's internal decision-makers and impress on them just how important it is for us to power the future of Python together, and send them our sponsor prospectus.
3. Point out the various benefits they will receive from sponsoring the PSF. Mention that PyCon US 2026 is coming up next spring, where they can connect with the community, recruit, and understand the current direction of the Python language!
4. Remind them to reach out to sponsors@python.org if they have any questions or would like a walk-through of our sponsorship program.

As the PSF prepares for our end-of-year fundraiser, we want to emphasize the importance of our community's support. Your relentless passion for Python and our community, along with your individual donations, memberships, stories, advocacy, and more, all make a huge impact and keep our tiny-but-mighty PSF team inspired. Keep your eyes on the PSF Blog, the PSF category on Discuss, and our social media accounts for updates and information as we kick off the fundraiser this month. Your boosts of our posts and your personal shares of “why I support the PSF” stories will make all the difference in our end-of-year fundraiser. 

If this post has you all fired up to personally support the future of Python and the PSF right now, we always welcome new PSF Supporting Members and donations. If you have questions about the PSF’s current financial outlook, the steps we’re taking, or how you can get involved, we welcome you to join the PSF Board Office Hours, join the conversation on Discuss, or email psf@python.org. As ever, we are incredibly grateful to be in community with each of you, and we’re honored to have your support.