Donations

SourceForge.net Donation System

Open Source software developers and projects are well-known for providing their source code and applications free-of-charge. These teams and individuals rely on donations to help offset development costs, hardware purchases, and other expenses (like travel to conferences) in support of ongoing development of the software.

SourceForge.net provides a Donation System, which allows site users and projects to easily request and accept financial support of their activities from the community. The Donation System is provided on an opt-in basis under specific terms of use. PayPal is used for the money handling. To use the Donation System, you must be eligible to use PayPal and must create a PayPal account.

SourceForge.net does not take any percent of project donations; this is provided free of charge.

Fees

Fees charged by PayPal also apply to donations received. These fees are detailed on the PayPal site. Please refer to this from your PayPal account to verify the current fees.

Opt-in

Users may opt-in to the Donation System through the Donation Management page.

Projects may opt-in to the Donation System as follows:

Login as a project administrator and click on the Project Admin > Project Settings menu and select the Donations link.
Enter the PayPal account information where the donations will be sent.
To help avoid strife within a project team, we require each project admin opt-in before donations can be accepted on the project. Contact each project administrator and have them confirm the opt-in (on this same page); you may also track the opt-in status of each project admin from this page.
Verified Donations
SourceForge displays a PayPal badge on donations verified by PayPal's Instant Payment Notification (IPN) system. Recipients must enable IPN in their PayPal accounts:

Enable IPN

Log in to your PayPal account.
Click Profile at the top of the page.
Click the Instant Payment Notification Preferences link in the Selling Preferences column.
Click Edit.
Check the box and enter any valid URL - we will override it with the correct value at donation time.
Click Save.

Notes

Tax laws vary by location. Please note that donations to projects and developers are generally not tax deductible. The party receiving the donation is typically responsible for any taxes that need to be paid on the income. Please read and understand the SourceForge.net Donation System Terms of Use and the PayPal terms of use before enabling this service.