Earn Open Data - Funding Meaningful Work for Community

Introduction

This site explores earning income via open data stewardship: maintaining datasets, portals, and tools for community benefit. Focus on sustainable models for small teams, drawing from open source best practices.

Key Stewardship Opportunities

Data Maintenance: Curate, validate, and update open datasets. Small cos can offer ongoing stewardship contracts.
Portal Operations: Run open data platforms with fiscal sponsorship (e.g., NumFOCUS model).
Tooling & Guides: Build/maintain analysis tools, following OSS funding guides.
Community Building: Facilitate events, docs; seek recurring sponsorships over VC highs.

Modern Funding Platforms

Updated marketplaces for gigs, funding, fiscal hosting emphasizing stewardship:

Type	Name	URL	API
Gigs	Upwork	upwork.com	https://developers.upwork.com/
Gigs	Freelancer	freelancer.com	https://developers.freelancer.com/
Gigs	Fiverr	fiverr.com
Funding	GitHub Sponsors	github.com/sponsors	https://docs.github.com/en/sponsors
Funding	Open Collective	opencollective.com	https://docs.opencollective.com/
Fiscal	NumFOCUS	numfocus.org	https://numfocus.org/sponsors/
Fiscal	Open Source Collective	opencollective.com/opensource

Source: data/markets.csv

Guidance from Open Source

Getting Paid for OSS: Recurring donations, fiscal hosts for sustainability.
Building Communities: Focus on welcoming stewards over growth hacks.
Small co model: Like NumFOCUS sponsors (Anaconda, Posit), provide services around open tools.