Supporting the development of Django

One of the most important projects the DSF started in 2014 is the Django Fellowship program. This is a project where paid contractors - currently Tim Graham and Berker Peksağ - have been engaged to manage some of the administrative and community management tasks of Django project. The initial pilot for this program will come to a close in mid-January; one of the major goals is to secure funding for this program on an ongoing basis.

The first two months of the Django Fellowship program have been very successful. In this short time Django Fellows worked on around 240 pull requests (including revising some of the major features that will be in Django 1.8), triaged at least 90 different tickets and made around 200 commits in total!

We believe the program has already had a great positive impact on how Django is developed and maintained. Release blocking and severe bugs are not postponed indefinitely. Django Fellows ensures that patches and contributions by the community are reviewed and looked at quickly.

The Django Fellowship programme costs around $10K each month to maintain.

Promoting the use of Django

In 2014 DSF spent almost $16,000 in the support of community events around the world. We sponsored various conferences, including Django Weekend Cardiff, PyCon Philippines, Kiwi PyCon, PyCon Australia and DjangoCon Australia. We also funded travel grants for DjangoCon Europe, DjangoCon US and DjangoVillage. DSF also sponsored travel so that someone could present Django tutorials at PyCon Ireland, PyCon Poland and PyCon Finland.

Supporting diversity

Django Software Foundation supports a number of initiatives that aims to increase diversity in Django and Python world. This year, this was most visible in the form of Django Girls workshops. We helped fund the original Django Girls event at EuroPython in Berlin; the success of this event lead to events in Australia, Taipei, Mbale, Kampala, Edinburgh, Budapest and Amsterdam - most of which received funding from the DSF - plus a number of other events in Europe.

The DSF also sponsored Django Carrots - a Django and Python tutorial for females in Poland; and Pyxie Dust - a Django, Python and Arduino workshops for teenage girls in Croatia, organized by one of the first alumni from DjangoGirls.

More than $4,000 were spent by DSF for events aiming to increase diversity.

We also set community standards by making Code of Conduct on events sponsored by DSF.

Kickstarters

In 2014 we contributed to three awesome Kickstarters:

• Django REST Framework 3, by Tom Christie,
• Improved PostgreSQL support for Django, by Marc Tamlyn,
• Tutorial focused on designers, by Tracy Osborn.

These campaigns contribute to Django and Django community greatly and we are happy we could help contribute to making these Kickstarters happen.

DSF sponsored $2,400 in total for these campaigns.

Malcolm Tredinnick Prize

Every year, the DSF funds the Malcolm Tredinnick Memorial Prize. It is named in honour of a leader of the Django community who passed away in March 2013. The prize is awarded to individual or organization that “best exemplifies the spirit of Malcolm’s work - someone who welcomes, supports and nurtures newcomers; freely gives feedback and assistance to others, and helps to grow the community”. Thanks to donations from the Django community, and a generous contribution from Malcolm's family, the award is accompanied by a $1000 cash prize.

This year the winner of the prize was the The Django Girls organization.

Redesign of djangoproject.com

At the end of 2014 we finally launched a redesign of the Django Project website. This project took many years, and many failed attempts, but we have finally brought the website up to standards of our industry. The redesign was a big effort of many people and volunteers. The design work was a combination of volunteer efforts, and a contractor; the DSF funded the paid work. The implementation was an entirely volunteer effort.

Summary

2014 was a very busy year for the Django Software Foundation, with a number of high profile projects and initiatives seeing the light of day. We hope to continue to grow and expand in 2015. However, all these activities require funding.

If we want to continue the Django Fellowship, or support more conferences, events and tutorials, we need your help! The fellowship program currently takes $10,000/month to maintain; other grants and sponsorships take tens of thousands a year to run. Without the financial assistance of the community, none of these activities will happen.

Help us continue this work! Over the next month, the DSF is running a fundraising drive so we can fund as many programs as possible in 2015. If you want to help us continue the work we do for Django and the Django community, you can:

• Donate any amount via our donation form, using a credit card or PayPal account.
• Become a corporate member of the DSF for $500, $2,000 or $5,000 a year depending on the size of your company.
• Make a larger corporate donation - if your organization is interested in making a donation without the obligations of DSF membership, please get in touch.

We really appreciate your support! Help us make Django world even better in 2015.

If you donated any amount to the DSF, please tweet about it with hashtag #supportdjango.

We look forward to the awesome things we will build together over the coming year!