Why can’t a company simply hand money to a WordPress contributor? On Community + Code episode 22, four board members of the WP Community Collective talked about open source sustainability and contributor burnout. I explained what sponsoring contributors looked like from inside GoDaddy, where I was a developer advocate.
🎙️ Episode details
- Topics: what sponsored contributors looked like at GoDaddy, why money needs a process, and testing collaborative editing at scale
- Show: Community + Code, episode 22, “The WP Community Collective”
- Host: Chris Reynoldsfriendmetcolleague, then the WPCC’s interim president
- Panel: Sé Reedcolleague, Jono Alderson and me, Courtney Robertson
- Released: March 20, 2026
- Listen or watch: Community + Code episode 22, with audio, video and a transcript file
🏢 What sponsored contributors looked like at GoDaddy
First, I described the mix of people GoDaddy sponsored to contribute: two full time staff, an engineer giving about ten hours a week to the Plugin Review team, and contractors, including Joe Dolsoncolleague. Some contributors, such as Kira Schroeder on security research and George Mamadashvili on Gutenberg, worked as contractors rather than employees, because GoDaddy didn’t hire directly in their countries. In turn, that raises real questions about budget, reporting lines and HR.
🧾 Why money needs a process
In short, companies can’t just send a contributor money. After all, paying people needs an accounting and tax process, and a way to direct funds to specific areas of the project. Some essential work is also hard to see, like digging through old Trac tickets to inform a security decision.
⚡ Testing collaborative editing at scale
After Matt Mullenweg mentioned GoDaddy and Bluehost in the context of testing, I’d been helping coordinate load testing of real time collaboration between GoDaddy’s hosting teams and core contributors, across time zones.
Sponsored contribution also creates tension: employers fund the work but don’t direct the project, and companies have to accept that.
🧪 What can you take about sponsored contributors?
- Topics: what sponsored contributors looked like at GoDaddy, why money needs a process, and testing collaborative editing at scale
- Companies: decide in advance how contractors in other countries will be paid and who they report to.
- Contributors: name the invisible research you do, so others can count and fund it.
Also, more conversations like this one live in my podcast and speaking archive.
🗓️ Archival note
Community + Code released this episode on March 20, 2026. Then I added this post on November 9, 2026. The publisher’s transcript file has speaker labels only for the opening, so I worked from a summary of it and kept to points that come from my role at GoDaddy. I haven’t relistened to the audio.