1. As a a member you can self-nominate to serve as a member of the OSMF Board. This allows you to influence the strategic plan, some of OSM’s finances and other matters that directly affect the direction of OpenStreetMap’s future.
This year’s OSMF General Meeting and board elections are 19 October 2024. This means that if you want to run for the Board you must become a member of the Foundation by 22 April 2024 There are FOUR Board positions up for election next fall. Even if you’re not sure that you want to run for the Board, but you think you might be interested, you should join!
2. If you are a member of the OSM foundation at least 90 days before the Annual General Meeting, you can vote in the annual Board elections,as well as on other foundation initiatives. The details on types of membership are here. Importantly, if you are an ‘active contributor’ you can apply for a free membership.
3. To help us grow and diversify the OSM Membership worldwide.
As you can see from this blog post, we are in the midst of a worldwide campaign to increase the number of OSM foundation members from all parts of the world. Right now, representation amongst OSM members is skewed toward the US and northern Europe, whereas there are many thousands of OSM contributors all over the world. By joining as a member, you can make the voices of the communities heard.
OSMF Board member Arnalie Vicario has been posting testimonials from current members on her X (and other accounts.). Here’s a video from Daniel Akor from OpenStreetMap Nigeria:
Daniel Akor from @OSMNigeria provides a background what is #OSMF & membership types, & encourages us to tackle geographical diversity in the #OSMF membership 🌍🌏🌎
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
Welcome to the 2024 OpenStreetMap Foundation Membership Campaign!
Today, members of the OpenStreetmap Foundation (OSMF) Board and several of the OSMF Working Groups are launching a worldwide OSMF Membership campaign with the goal of growing and diversifying OSMF membership in regions where there are no or very few OSMF members.
As you can see from this map, there are many such regions.
A visualization of OSMF membership by country, worldwide
OSM is known for being built by a vast, global community of mappers, GIS professionals, community builders, developers, engineers, trainers, etc. over the last twenty years of the map’s existence, all of whom contribute their local knowledge and maintain open and free geospatial data.
The OSM Foundation administers and supports the making of OSM by overseeing OSM’s technological systems and data. It also helps steer the long-term strategy and well-being of the map.
So, it’s very important to have the membership of the OSM Foundation be reflective of the vast diversity of its community.
Why Do We Need an #OSMFMembershipCampaign?
As headlined on the OSMF website, the OpenStreetMap Foundation is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data and to providing geospatial data for anyone to use and share.
It’s important to note that you don’t have to be a member of the OSM Foundation to make a profile on OSM.org and begin editing OpenStreetMap. You don’t even have to be a member to volunteer for a local community or a Working Group, or go to a State of the Map event or participate in a mapping party.
However, if you want to make a difference in the overall future of OSM, becoming an OSMF member is a good idea.For example, OSMF members are entitled to vote in the affairs of the Foundation, including to select members of the Board. OSMF members can also self-nominate for the Board. As you can see from its charter, the OSM Foundation values OSM contributors, and the OSMF membership exists to give dedicated contributors a voice in how the Foundation is run.
However, of 16 January 2024, there are just 1,929 OSMF members. This is a small percentage of the overall number of active mappers in OSM. (Pascal Neishas provided many resources, including this one,which show the data about the tens of thousands of people who are mapping at any one time and the millions who have mapped over the last 20 years.)
The fact that there are only 1,929 OSMF members means that just a tiny percentage of OSM’ers are electing the board and helping shape the OSM strategic plan and finances.
Further, here is the regional distribution of the 1,929 OSMF members.
To be successful at its goal to represent the interests of the OSM community, the OSMF must increase its membership in regions and countries where there are no or very few OSMF members.
What Are The Benefits of Being a Member of the OSMF?
You get to play a direct role in choosing the leadership of the OSM Foundation. OSMF members vote every year at the Annual General Meeting, usually held in December, to elect the people who serve as volunteers on the OSMF Board. Importantly, you have to be a member in good standing 90 days before the election, so the time to join is now.
If you’re a member during the 180 days before the General Meeting, you can self-nominate to serve as a member of the OSMF Board. This allows you to influence the strategic plan, some of OSM’s finances and other matters of governance.
You show your support for the map and the community.
If you are already an OSMF member, share why OSM mappers should be a member and encourage OSM contributors to join as an OSMF member! Use the testimonial guide and upload your testimonials in the OSM Community Forum thread or email arnalie.vicario [at] osmfoundation.org
We are specifically looking for volunteer translators who can help us translate into different languages, specifically:
French
Spanish (Juan)
Arabic
Portuguese
Swahili
We are also looking for help to explore other spaces where we can reach OSM community members, for example by organizing webinars, researching spaces e.g. podcasts where we can promote the campaign, and going live on social media (e.g. Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, etc.).
We appreciate your help and look forward to growing and diversifying OSMF membership with you!
The OSMF Membership Campaign Team
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.
If you contribute significantly to the OpenStreetMap project you should have a voice in the OpenStreetMap Foundation, which is supporting the project, and be able to vote for the board members of your choice. There is now an easier and costless way to become an OpenStreetMap Foundation member:
The volunteers of the OSMF Membership Working Group have just implemented the active contributor membership program, where you can easily apply to become an Associate member of the Foundation and there is no need to pay the membership fee.
What can I do as an OSMF Associate member?
You can vote for the board candidates of your choice at the board elections.
You can vote on some issues during General Meetings (but not all).
You have the option to receive a single daily digest, containing all the emails of the day.
Feel free to email in your language 🙂
You can proudly say that you are an OSMF member 🙂
How does it work?
We will automatically grant associate memberships to mappers who request it and who have contributed at least 42 calendar days in the last year (365 days).
Not everyone contributes by mapping, and some of the most familiar names in our members list barely map. Some are very involved, for example, in organizing conferences. Those other forms of contribution should be recognised as well. If you do not map at all or less than the 42 days, then we expect you to write a paragraph or two about what you do for OpenStreetMap. The Board will then vote on your application.
How can I find out how many mapping days I have?
You can get an estimate from tools like Pascal Neis How did you contribute, which should be accurate enough for most purposes.
If you are technically versed and wish to verify your mapping days yourself, use the changesets API of OSM to query your changesets. Then you can collect all unique dates in the created_at attributes of the changesets, and count how many unique days you have in the last 365 days.
I would like to become a member via the active contributor program!
● If you qualify based on mapping activity (at least 42 mapping days in the last 365 days) please fill out this form to get your active contributor membership
Your email address (where ballots for voting will be sent and will be the email address associated with participation in the OSMF members mailing list, if you choose to subscribe)
How long is this membership valid?
Just like paid membership, membership under the membership fee waiver programme must be renewed annually. You will get a reminder, and you then can request the renewal, similar to the initial application. The check for mapping at least 42 calendar days in the last year will be carried out at the time you request the renewal, or alternatively you submit again a paragraph or two about what you do for OpenStreetMap.
What else do I need to know?
By law, every member of the OSMF can inspect the membership register (we ask for the purpose before handing it out and generally distribution by the recipient is not allowed). Who joined under which program is not revealed. The name, country, email and one of the OSM account names will be shown.
Why does this active contributor membership program exist?
By inviting more active community members to join the OSMF, we become more resilient against take-over attempts through massive signups. We believe that even mappers for whom £15 is not a lot of money would be more willing to join, if they are invited to a free membership due to their good work. Also, active contribution to the project is easier to assess than financial hardship and does not require the applicant to disclose personal information. The potential loss of individual membership fee income is not a threat to our financial stability. In fact, there are quite a few members who like to donate more than just £15. Those donations need not be tied to any membership.
Why 42 mapping days?
Mapping days is not perfect, but we need a benchmark that is objective, easy to verify, and simple for us to measure and implement. Why 42 days? If we measure contributions in mapping days by OSMF members who map (83%), roughly half of them map more than 42 days per year. We would expect a “slightly exceptional” contribution in terms of mapping days.
How are my changes divided into days for measuring 42 mapping days
For measuring the mapping days, the created at time stamp of each changeset is used. Typically, all changes in a change set have the same time stamp. A day is defined in UTC from midnight to midnight.
Does paid mapping count?
The “active contributor program” is there to measure your engagement towards the project. In the first place, we think this is shown by volunteer activities for the project. If you do organizing or mapping for OSM as a part of your paid job, that is not necessarily a show of engagement with the project. By default, we would not include these activities as qualifying for this type of membership. But feel free to explain your contributions, and the Board will have a vote.
Can’t this be cheated?
We also discussed abuse. When we receive an application, we contact the mentioned OpenStreetMap account(s) through the OSM messaging system to confirm they are owned by the applicant. You could of course make tiny contributions like wiggling a single node on 60 days, and maybe go undetected and get your membership. But that would be fraud, and the membership could be revoked if the OSMF Membership Working Group finds out that the contributions are not meaningful.
What happens to the old fee waiver program?
The Active contributor membership program is replacing the old “fee waiver” program (active from 2018 January onward) where the membership fee was waived in cases of financial hardship or lack of suitable money transfer ability. The change was made possible by a vote during the 2019 Annual General Meeting. The “financial hardship” and “Lack of suitable money transfer” rule will be dropped entirely because even today, we expect someone joining under those rules to demonstrate some sort of contribution, so they would likely be eligible under the new rule as well.
Do you want to translate this and other blogposts in another language..? Please send an email to communication@osmfoundation.org with subject: Helping with translations in [language]
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. It has no full-time employees and it is supporting the OpenStreetMap project through the work of our volunteer Working Groups.
Last December at the Annual General Meeting of the OpenStreetMap Foundation a proposal for membership in the foundation based solely on sizeable contribution was accepted with a very good result (91%):
The membership fee for associate membership, which normally is tied to the regular membership fee, may be waived if the person applying for membership can demonstrate that they have consistently made sizeable contributions to OpenStreetMap, for example by mapping.
The OSMF Membership Working Group will, together with the Board of Directors, define what counts as “sizeable contributions”.
Just like paid membership, membership under the membership fee waiver programme must be renewed annually.
In January, the Membership Working Group (MWG) discussed the implementation. Sorry for the long silence since; the MWG would now like to open the discussion and ask for your feedback and comments on the implementation of the new active contributor membership.
As described in the rationale for the vote, this is no charity. We want active contributors to be members of the OSMF and be able to vote for the benefit of the project. The membership fee should not be a barrier.
Our proposal is to automatically grant memberships to mappers who request it and who have contributed at least 42 calendar days in the last year (365 days).
Mapping days is not perfect, but we need a benchmark that is objective, easy to verify, and simple for us to measure and implement.
Why 42 days? If we measure contributions in mapping days by OSMF members who map (83%), roughly half of them map more than 42 days per year. We would expect a “slightly exceptional” contribution in terms of mapping days.
We also discussed abuse. You could of course make tiny contributions like wiggling a single node on 60 days, and maybe go undetected and get your membership. But that would be fraud, and the membership could be revoked if MWG finds out that the contributions are not meaningful.
On non-mapping contributions to the project
Not everyone contributes by mapping, and some of the most familiar names in our members list barely map. Some are very involved, for example, in organizing conferences. Those other forms of contribution should be recognised as well, and the board would take circular decisions on these applications.
Please share your thoughts
We would like to hear your thoughts on the proposal. You can:
Do you want to translate this and other blogposts in your language..? Please send us an email to communication@osmfoundation.org with subject: Helping with translations in [your language]
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. It has no full-time employees and it is supporting the OpenStreetMap project through the work of our volunteer Working Groups. Please consider becoming a member of the Foundation.
OpenStreetMap was founded in 2004 and is a international project to create a free map of the world. To do so, we, thousands of volunteers, collect data about roads, railways, rivers, forests, buildings and a lot more worldwide. Our map data can be downloaded for free by everyone and used for any purpose – including commercial usage. It is possible to produce your own maps which highlight certain features, to calculate routes etc. OpenStreetMap is increasingly used when one needs maps which can be very quickly, or easily, updated.
Joining the OpenStreetMap Foundation used to always require a membership fee (£15 per year, which you can pay by PayPal or bank transfer). However, if you are involved in the OpenStreetMap project, and cannot pay this membership fee, it can be waived. Some OSMers live in a country under economic sanction/embargo (and thus without PayPal). Others are in nations where the bank transfer costs themselves exceed the cost of membership. Others live under circumstances where this fee alone would constitute a substantial personal financial hardship. One of the main reasons for the Membership Fee Waiver program, is a wish to be more representative of mappers from around the world.
To address this, the Fee Waiver Program was created, which, for those who qualify, will grant an Associate Membership in the Foundation at no cost, subject to annual renewal.
Some reasons to join the OSMF
As a member of the Foundation you can influence the future direction of the project by
voting in the annual OSM Foundation elections for the board that steers the project.
Without being a member you can still edit OpenStreetMap, by creating a free account at https://www.openstreetmap.org and help the Foundation by joining one of the Working Groups.
Eligibility
Currently you are eligible to apply for a fee waiver if:
You are an active mapper, and are from a country which lacks suitable money transfer.
You are an active mapper, and paying the membership fee would present an unreasonable burden to you because of financial hardship
Please note that there might be changes after the 2019 Annual General Meeting.
Languages
You can apply in a language other than English.
Where to find more information
Please read the Fee Waiver manual on the OSM wiki, to find out how to fill the forms, the procedure and the links to the forms.
How to help
If you are interested in helping more people from your community become members of the Foundation, please:
Contact the Communication Working Group (communication@osmfoundation.org) if you are willing to translate submissions in your native (or other languages) to English. You will have to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
The fee-waiver program has been developed under the Board’s direction by the volunteers of the Membership Working Group, with particular thanks to Joost Schouppe, Michael Spreng and Steve Friedl who have kept up the regular work with the Registrar.
Do you want to translate this and other blogposts in your language..? Please send an email to communication@osmfoundation.org with subject: Helping with translations in [your language]
The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed in the UK 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. It has no full-time employees and it is supporting the OpenStreetMap project through the work of our volunteer Working Groups. Please consider becoming a member.
Last October we introduced the new OSMF Corporate Membership tiers. We’d like to thank the following organisations who have entered or renewed onto the new corporate membership tiers:
Your organization can become a Corporate Member for as little as €500 for ‘Supporter’ level, all the way up to €20,000 for ‘Platinum’ level. The above all opted for ‘Bronze’ level, except Toursprung and NextGIS who are ‘Supporters’. Coming soon we’ll bring you news of some new ‘Gold’ level members! Each level has different benefits but the biggest benefit of all is the knowledge that your organization is doing its part to support the growth and sustainability of the OpenStreetMap project. So thanks again to all our Corporate Members!
The OpenStreetMap Foundation has had a Corporate Membership option for a while, where organizations and companies could become Associate Members of the OpenStreetMap Foundation for GBP 1000 per year. We have seen fantastic interest in this scheme, which is a sign that organizations and companies using OpenStreetMap are willing to give back to the project. In the first years of its existence, we also received a lot of feedback on the Corporate Membership as it exists today. Most of all, organizations wanted more flexibility in the amount they want to pay in exchange for their corporate membership.
After taking in the feedback, consulting with exisiting and potential Corporate Members as well as the Foundation membership, we have designed a new tiered Corporate Membership program that we believe aligns much more closely with the needs of potential Corporate Members. Your organization can now become a Corporate Member for as little as €500 for ‘Supporter’ level, all the way up to €20,000 for ‘Platinum’ level. Each level has different benefits, as laid out below. But the biggest benefit of all is the knowledge that your organization is doing its part to support the growth and sustainability of the OpenStreetMap project!
Invite a board member for an in-house presentation about OpenStreetMap (you pay for travel / lodging)
This new program will take effect on Jan 1, 2017. However, if you are interested in becoming a corporate member, please do not hesitate to contact us now, and we can get you set up. If you are currently a Corporate Member, we will be in touch about your transition to the new program.
