Together, we have built a welcoming, thriving community based on a culture of mutual respect, support, and generosity.

As a community, we’ve seen contributions to Mautic grow from averaging 10-20 a month to the present 200+ contributions a month, a huge increase in active members across our community channels, and sustained growth across our ecosystem — creating opportunities for agencies and developers who have built a sustainable business around Mautic.

To anyone who’s been part of Mautic or any large open source project, you know the tight bonds, energy, effort, and passion that goes into making a project like this scale to an ecosystem of this size. No matter how long or short you’ve been involved — know that you have had an impact and that you made a difference — for that I thank you. I am humbled by what it took to get this to where it is today. 

As a project, a community, as an ecosystem — we’ve grown up. Mautic now is an open source project that empowers an entire ecosystem. We’re on a strong trajectory of growth and we’ve got exciting plans for the future.

Times of change

Since late 2022, I have been talking with Dries Buytaert — co-founder of Acquia and my line manager — about how Mautic can continue to grow and thrive as an open source project. I believe to do that, we should explore different governance models to move towards being a fully community-governed open source project. 

For context, Acquia has supported Mautic since 2019 by funding my role as Project Lead, as well as enabling an engineer to spend half their time supporting the community. This support has been instrumental in Mautic’s success and I am personally grateful for the opportunities that Acquia has given both Mautic and myself.

As a community, I’m excited for us to continue to work together to flourish. We’ve got some exciting times ahead of us — and I’m looking forward to seeing how we grow together!

Now is the time for us to find our new way forward, and I am excited to share what is ahead!

My key priorities for Mautic

Moving forward as an independent open source project, the key things we need to ensure for Mautic in any future organisational structure and governance model are that:

  • Mautic becomes a truly autonomous, self-governing open source project. The project’s governance and operation is free from any kind of external majority control.

  • Mautic owns and manages its trademarks and brand resources. These are currently owned and managed by Acquia, who acquired them during the 2019 acquisition of Mautic Inc.

  • Mautic is free and able to make decisions within its governance model that are in the best interest of the project.

  • Mautic provides full transparency of financial and operational management within the project.

  • Mautic is empowered and resourced to continue on its trajectory of growth into the future.

These are fundamental requirements for the long term health and security of any open source project, not just for Mautic. With that in mind, I set about researching some of the options that might be open to us.

Speaking in confidence with various subject-matter experts across open source and non-profit organisations, community leaders who have guided organisations through transitions, and people with governance expertise among others — I am confident in the requirements to move forward. Furthermore; I feel empowered by the strength and passion shared with me by various key stakeholders and agencies within the Mautic community.

To everybody who gave me your time in this period, I cannot thank you enough. Your insights, wisdom, support and encouragement have been invaluable. I hope to be able to repay the favour in the future, my door is always open.

Reviewing options

With insights, research, and expertise in mind, I looked into several options that were available to us, including:

  • Continuing as we are, using the Open Source Collective as our fiscal host to manage our financial assets, employing me on behalf of the community, and holding our trademarks
  • Explore joining the Drupal Association, which is focused on accelerating Drupal, fostering the growth of the Drupal community, and supporting the project’s vision to create a safe, secure, and open web for everyone
  • Consider existing umbrella organisations that support open source projects, such as the Linux Foundation, Apache Foundation etc.
  • Consider creating our own non-profit organisation

Making big decisions is hard

All this being said — big decisions are hard! 

With all of the challenges that an open source project faces, making decisions with the best interests of the long term health and security of the project over and above the immediate positives that might be offered, and the personal security of my own employment, is a (very) tough place to be in.

With the requirements mentioned earlier in mind, and after plenty of thought and discussions with the Mautic Community Leadership Team, it was decided that the first option is currently the best route forward for the Mautic Project.

I do believe that this decision is the right one and that, even if you may not currently agree with it, you have trust in your fellow community members and what we’ve built together to continue building the future together. 

I would like to extend thanks to everybody who has been involved to date in helping explore possible routes forward for Mautic, in particular to the Drupal Association.

What does this mean for Mautic?

Redefining our governance structure

We now have an opportunity to reconsider whether we believe that forming a non-profit would be helpful for the Mautic project at this time.

We are currently very well served by the Open Source Collective, which provides Mautic with a ton of services that allow us to function effectively without the need for a non-profit organisation. 

I will consider our options in consultation with the Mautic Community Leadership Team and will share the outcome with the community when the appropriate due diligence has been completed.

Planning for a future of growth 

Taking this decision is far from the easy route. If I am to continue working as the Project Lead, I can’t do that as a volunteer.

Acquia provided us with seed funding that gives us a cushion financially. This will allow me to continue in this role to focus on growth, employed by the community. To ensure sustainability, however, we must focus on developing our financial base. Currently, it costs us in the region of $20-30,000 per year to run the project. You can view the full breakdown of spending on our Open Collective.

Our income averages around $35,000 per year with a bit of variability depending on how successful our conferences are. Between $1,500-2,000 per month comes in through regular and one-off sponsorships. All this said — we make a small profit at this time which serves as a small buffer for unplanned expenses.

The existing plans for the next 1-3-5-10 years saw us steadily building up our financial base. This financial base will drive a future of growth and innovation, allowing us to employ developers to work full time on core and strategic initiatives, grow the project into being fully self-sustaining, and enable us to focus on bringing more projects to realisation.

Creating the financial foundation for this plan will need to become an immediate focus over the next six months to accelerate our plans towards financial independence and to support our ambitious plans for growth. I am confident in our plans to achieve this growth.

How can you help Mautic?

We have various ways that we are hoping to do this, but the best way for you to support us through this time of transition is to sponsor Mautic financially in whatever way you can.

Whether it is a regular monthly donation as a company or an individual, sponsoring the Mautic Conference Global event, or making a one-time donation — all of these options help us reach our goal. 

We envision an independent, sustainable future of growth for Mautic. 

No matter how big or small your donation — it doesn’t make it inconsequential or insignificant. Know that your contribution is appreciated. Imagine if every person who used Mautic contributed just $5 per month, what a difference that would make.

Personally, my goal is to have at least 20% of the companies who are active in the Mautic community contributing at least $10 per month by the end of the year. If we work together to make this happen, it would give us a much firmer base to build upon going forward.

If you are already a contributor (thank you, awesome people!) please do consider if you are able to increase your donation, or make an additional one-time donation. 

We will soon be refreshing our sponsorship tiers which will provide a lot of exciting perks to help drive awareness of your brand and support your business growth, with the incentives growing as the monthly amount increases.

Going forward we will be following the principles of the Open Startup model so expertly used by our Community Partners, Friendly, to share with you our financial status, growth against targets and how things are going. This will be posted on mautic.org and on our Open Collective each month.

Moving forward, together

I know this has been quite a lengthy article to read, thank you for taking the time to make your way through it.

Because of our community’s values in transparency, ethics, and belief in openness, I felt that it was important to be transparent and fully communicate this news. This included some of the hard parts, from the tough position I’m in with my role and personal employment, the decision to decline the opportunity presented by the Drupal Association, and where we are going into the future.

This is a great opportunity for us to really fuel growth and innovation in the Mautic community, and build the solid foundations for what I fully expect to be an exciting time ahead.

If you can’t yet see the opportunity that lies ahead, my door is open. I fully can empathise and understand in the fear of the unknown. If there’s one thing that’s kept me going through this time, it’s been the power of the community. 

I will be running several webinars and office hours over the coming weeks if you have any questions that you would like answers to:

Office Hours

Webinars

 

Support Mautic financially

Finally, if you want to be a part of Mautic’s success going forward, here’s where you can support Mautic financially: