NEP: NumPy sponsorship guidelines (NEP 46)

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+.. _NEP46:
+
+=====================================
+NEP 46 — NumPy Sponsorship Guidelines
+=====================================
+
+:Author: Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers@gmail.com>
+:Status: Draft
+:Type: Process
+:Created: 2020-12-27
+:Resolution: <url> (required for Accepted | Rejected | Withdrawn)
+
+
+Abstract
+--------
+
+This NEP provides guidelines on how the NumPy project will acknowledge
+financial and in-kind support.
+
+
+Motivation and Scope
+--------------------
+
+In the past few years the NumPy project has gotten significant financial
+support, as well as dedicated work time for maintainers to work on NumPy. There
+is a need to acknowledge that support - funders and organizations expect or require
+it, it's helpful when looking for new funding, and it's the right thing to do.
+Furthermore, having a clear policy for how NumPy acknowledges support is
+helpful when searching for new support.
+
+This NEP is aimed at both the NumPy community - who can use it when looking for
+support and acknowledging existing support - and at past, current and
+prospective sponsors, who often want or need to know what they get in return
+for their support (other than a healthier NumPy).
+
+The scope of this proposal includes:
+
+- direct financial support, employers providing paid time for NumPy maintainers
+  and regular contributors, and in-kind support such as free hardware resources or
+  services.
+- where and how NumPy acknowledges support (e.g., logo placement on the website).
+- the amount and duration of support which leads to acknowledgement.
+- who in the NumPy project is responsible for sponsorship related topics, and
+  how to contact them.
+
+
+How NumPy will acknowledge support
+----------------------------------
+
+There will be two different ways to acknowledge financial and in-kind support,
+one to recognize significant active support, and another one to recognize
+support received in the past and smaller amounts of support.
+
+Entities who fall under "significant active supporter" we'll call Sponsor.
+The minimum level of support given to NumPy to be considered a Sponsor are:
+
+- $30,000/yr for unrestricted financial contributions
+- $60,000/yr for financial contributions for a particular purpose
+- $100,000/yr for in-kind contributions
+
+The rationale for the above levels is that unrestricted financial contributions
+are typically the most valuable for the project, and the hardest to obtain.
+The opposite is true for in-kind contributions. The dollar value of the levels
+also reflect that NumPy's needs have grown to the point where we need at least
+a few paid developers in order to effectively support our user base and
+continue to move the project forward. Financial support at or above these
+levels is needed to be able to make a significant difference.
+
+Sponsors will get acknowledged through:
+
+- a small logo displayed on the front page of the NumPy website
+- prominent logo placement on https://numpy.org/about/
+- logos displayed in talks about NumPy by maintainers
+- announcements of the sponsorship on the NumPy mailing list and the numpy-team
+  Twitter account
+
+In addition to Sponsors, we already have the concept of Institutional Partner
+(defined in NumPy's
+`governance document <https://numpy.org/devdocs/dev/governance/index.html>`__),
+for entities who employ a NumPy maintainer and let them work on NumPy as part
+of their official duties. The governance document doesn't currently define a
+minimum amount of paid maintainer time needed to be considered for partnership.
+Therefore we propose that level here, roughly in line with the sponsorship
+levels:
+
+- 6 person-months/yr of paid work time for one or more NumPy maintainers or
+  regular contributors
+
+Institutional Partners get the same benefits as Sponsors, in addition to what
+is specified in the NumPy governance document.
+
+Finally, a new page on the website (https://numpy.org/funding/, linked from the
+About page) will be added to acknowledge all current and previous sponsors,
+partners, and any other entities and individuals who provided $5,000 or more of
+financial or in-kind support. This page will include relevant details of
+support (dates, amounts, names and purpose); no logos will be used on this
+page. The rationale for the $5,000 minimum level is to keep the amount of work
+maintaining the page reasonable; the level is the equivalent of, e.g., one GSoC
+or a person-week's worth of engineering time in a Western country, which seems
+like a reasonable lower limit.
+
+
+Implementation
+--------------
+
+The following content changes need to be made:
+
+- Add a section with small logos towards the bottom of the `numpy.org
+  <https://numpy.org/>`__ website.
+- Create a full list of historical and current support and deploy it to
+  https://numpy.org/funding.
+- Update the NumPy governance document for changes to Institutional Partner
+  eligibility requirements and benefits.
+- Update https://numpy.org/about with details on how to get in touch with the
+  NumPy project about sponsorship related matters (see next section).
+
+
+A NumPy Funding Team
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+At the moment NumPy has only one official body, the Steering Council, and no
+good way to get in touch with either that body or any person or group
+responsible for funding and sponsorship related matters. The way this is
+typically done now is to somehow find the personal email of a maintainer, and
+email them in private. There is a need to organize this more transparently - a
+potential sponsor isn't likely to inquire through the mailing list, nor is it
+easy for a potential sponsor to know if they're reaching out to the right
+person in private.
+
+https://numpy.org/about/ already says that NumPy has a "funding and grants"
+team, however that is not the case. We propose to organize this team, name team
+members on it, and add the names of those team members plus a dedicated email
+address for the team to the About page.
+
+
+Status before this proposal
+---------------------------
+
+Acknowledgement of support
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+At the time of writing (Dec 2020), the logos of the four largest financial
+sponsors and two institutional partners are displayed on
+https://numpy.org/about/. The `Nature paper about NumPy <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2649-2>`__
+mentions some early funding. No comprehensive list of received funding and
+in-kind support is published anywhere.
+
+Decisions on which logos to list on the website have been made mostly by the
+website team. Decisions on which entities to recognize as Institutional Partner
+have been made by the NumPy Steering Council.
+
+
+NumPy governance, decision-making and financial oversight
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+*This section is meant as context for the reader, to help put the rest of this
+NEP in perspective, and perhaps answer questions the reader has when reading
+this as a potential sponsor.*
+
+NumPy has a formal governance structure defined in
+`this governance document <https://numpy.org/devdocs/dev/governance/index.html>`__).
+Decisions are made by consensus among all active participants in a discussion
+(typically on the mailing list), and if consensus cannot be reached then the
+Steering Council takes the decision (also by consensus).
+
+NumPy is a sponsored project of NumFOCUS, a US-based 501(c)3 nonprofit.
+NumFOCUS administers NumPy funds, and ensures they are spent in accordance with
+its mission and nonprofit status. In practice, NumPy has a NumFOCUS
+subcommittee (with its members named in the NumPy governance document) who can
+authorize financial transactions. Those transactions, for example paying a
+contractor for a particular activity or deliverable, are decided on by the
+NumPy Steering Council.
+
+
+Alternatives
+------------
+
+*Tiered sponsorship levels.* We considered using tiered sponsorship levels, and
+rejected this alternative because it would be more complex, and not necessarily
+communicate the right intent - the minimum levels are for us to determine how
+to acknowledge support that we receive, not a commercial value proposition.
+Entities typically will support NumPy because they rely on the project or want
+to help advance it, and not to get brand awareness through logo placement.
+
+*Listing all donations*. Note that in the past we have received many smaller
+donations, mostly from individuals through NumFOCUS. It would be great to list
+all of those contributions, but given the way we receive information on those
+donations right now, that would be quite labor-intensive. If we manage to move
+to a more suitable platform, such as `Open Collective <https://opencollective.com/>`__,
+in the future, we should reconsider listing all individual donations.
+
+
+Related Work
+------------
+
+Here we provide a few examples of how other project handle sponsorship
+guidelines and acknowledgements.
+
+*Scikit-learn* has a narrow banner with logos at the bottom of
+https://scikit-learn.org, and a list of present funding and past sponsors at
+https://scikit-learn.org/stable/about.html#funding. Plus a separate section
+"Infrastructure support" at the bottom of that same About page.
+
+*Jupyter* has logos of sponsors and institutional partners in two sections on
+https://jupyter.org/about. Some subprojects have separate approaches, for
+example sponsors are listed (by using the `all-contributors
+<https://github.com/all-contributors/all-contributors>`__ bot) in the README for
+`jupyterlab-git <https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab-git>`__. For a recent
+discussion on that, see `here <jupyterlab-git acknowledgements discussion>`_.
+
+*NumFOCUS* has a large banner with sponsor logos on its front page at
+https://numfocus.org, and a full page with sponsors at different sponsorship
+levels listed at https://numfocus.org/sponsors. They also have a
+`Corporate Sponsorship Prospectus <https://numfocus.org/blog/introducing-our-newest-corporate-sponsorship-prospectus>`__,
+which includes a lot of detail on both sponsorship levels and benefits, as well
+as how that helps NumFOCUS-affiliated projects (including NumPy).
+
+
+Discussion
+----------
+
+Mailing list thread(s) discussing this NEP: TODO
+
+
+References and Footnotes
+------------------------
+
+- `Inside NumPy: preparing for the next decade <https://github.com/numpy/archive/blob/master/content/inside_numpy_presentation_SciPy2019.pdf>`__ presentation at SciPy'19 discussing impact of the first NumPy grant.
+- `Issue  <https://github.com/numpy/numpy/issues/13393>`__ and
+  `email <https://mail.python.org/pipermail/numpy-discussion/2019-April/079371.html>`__
+  where IBM offered a $5,000 bounty for VSX SIMD support
+- `JupyterLab Corporate Engagement and Contribution Guide <https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/blob/master/CORPORATE.md>`__
+
+
+.. _jupyterlab-git acknowledgements discussion: https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab-git/pull/530
+
+
+Copyright
+---------
+
+This document has been placed in the public domain.