Mappers, Universities, Companies, and nonprofits Contributed Over £373,000 to Support OSM in 2023

Last year, the global OpenStreetMap community, together with OSM’s corporate members and partners, donated an astounding £373,000 to support the map.

In an extraordinary show of support for OSM’s 19th birthday, the mapping community contributed over £113,000 through small donations. This enthusiastic broad base of community support resulted in approximately 3,089 donations from all over the world averaging £36 each. The OSM fundraising committee is especially grateful for the social media shares and the kind and encouraging comments on supporting.openstreetmap.com, in addition to the gifts. The positive response to the birthday fundraising campaign was a highlight of the year. Thank you!

OSM’s corporate partners also played a pivotal role, with total corporate memberships reaching £201,074. Additional, generous gifts, above and beyond corporate membership fees, from Microsoft, NextGIS, Smoca, and Elasticsearch helped bring us to the £373,000 total. We are also grateful to the corporate Advisory Board for their advice and collaboration which has been essential to the success of our partnerships.Thank you!

A special note of thanks goes out to NextGIS, which has pledged 10% of its profits from data sales to OSM, setting an impressive standard for its commitment to the project.

In an extraordinary show of support for OSM’s 19th birthday, the mapping community contributed over £113,000 through small donations. This enthusiastic broad base of community support resulted in approximately 3,089 donations from all over the world, averaging £36 each.

OSM is fortunate to be the recipient of mission critical, “in kind” support through donations hardware and other infrastructure. We are grateful to Fastly, who provide the content delivery network for the file service, and many others, including TomTom, Bytemark, AWS and University College London, as well as AARNet, AWS,Academic Computer Club, Umeå University, Appliwave, Bytemark, Equinix Amsterdam, Equinix Dublin, Exonetric, INX-ZA, NetAlerts, OSUOSL, OVH, and Scaleway and everyone else who contributes to OpenStreetMap.

We’d also like to add a special note of thanks to Kevin Bushaw, who gave us a steep discount on our new website, supporting.openstreetmap.org.

The funds raised in 2023 will go toward enhancing infrastructure, supporting our critical support staff including our SSRE, and helping build OSM into the future.

On behalf of OSM’s local communities, the OSMF board would like to thank the companies who sponsored SotMs in 2023, both regional and local. This kind of support is very important to local communities, because the OSMF itself cannot promise companies that their funding goes towards regional events, except where the money is earmarked as part of a Sponsorship Distribution Agreement. Companies who directly support regional events are making a positive difference for the community and the quality of the map.

Lastly, we want to point out that any generosity toward OpenStreetMap is generosity to the broader open source software and data community, not just the OSM project. The impact of your gifts extends far beyond the financial; it is a commitment to a world where open data serves as a cornerstone for creativity, problem-solving, and community building.

Thank you for supporting OpenStreetMap!

The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed to support the OpenStreetMap Project. It is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data for anyone to use and share. The OpenStreetMap Foundation owns and maintains the infrastructure of the OpenStreetMap project, is financially supported by membership fees and donations, and organises the annual, international State of the Map conference. Our volunteer Working Groups and small core staff work to support the OpenStreetMap project. Join the OpenStreetMap Foundation for just £15 a year or for free if you are an active OpenStreetMap contributor.

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