In 2014, Matt Mullenweg challenged the WordPress community to volunteer 5% of their time towards open-source and WordPress.org.

A few months later, I ran a successful fundraising compaign that allowed me to donate 6 months worth of time towards BuddyPress & bbPress.

For 2017, and hopefully with your help, I’m going to try something a little different that I’ve nicknamed: 💯∞.

My goal is be a fully funded independent ambassador for WordPress & the surrounding initiatives, backed by many of the best companies who continue to push WordPress beyond its limits on a daily basis.

Practically speaking, I imagine this to work like a monthly retainer to work on WordPress core and Dotorg. Someone pays, say, $7500, and I get to say January 2017’s progress was brought to you by Pagely, February by GoDaddy, March by CrowdFavorite, April by Jetpack, May by WebDevStudios, June by GiveWP, and so on, forever.

(The structure is a bit TBD. Maybe it’s weekly rather than monthly, or quarterly, or something else entirely. Hopefully you get the idea.)

It’s like a podcast, but instead of airtime ad placement, it’s coretime leadership, contributor relations, and issue management.

Some of y’all who think this is somewhat unconventional may say – Why not just be a full-time employee?

That may end up happening – it may actually be the smarter move in the long run here – but I think there’s high value in being an independent, nonpartisan thought leader that *wants* to help everyone navigate the ins & outs of contributing to open-source, more specifically WordPress, et al. Since that’s where I’ve seen the most success, I’d like to put maximum effort into continuing that trend; if it’s not sustainable, then we learned something together and try something different.

This weekend at WordCamp US, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting with several folks who love the idea and are… deeply… interested in making this work however they can, up to and including growth beyond myself for other individuals who are able to provide more value as an independent voice.

If you’d like to help, please email me. If you have questions, concerns, criticisms, or feedback, please get in touch somehow.

Thanks for having an open mind, and for considering investing in the future of something that really, truly means a lot. To the folks who are already onboard, I’m so excited you are willing to give this a try with me.

P.S. Have I mentioned how much better WordPress is on mobile? I wrote all of this from my iPhone without any issues, which is still so incredible to me. Great job, mobile team!

P.P.S. If you’re unfamiliar with why I think I can do this, I’ve contributed to every major WordPress release since 2.5, am a member of the security team, meta team, and have helped lead BuddyPress & bbPress since 2009. I love WordPress and want to help it continue to grow in whatever direction it needs to take. I’m going to do it anyways, and with your help we can do it together.