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<p>For nearly 30 years, GNOME has been a cornerstone of the Free Software ecosystem, driving innovation on the Linux desktop and empowering millions of users. Historically, much of this work was made possible through corporate philanthropy from sponsors like Red Hat and SUSE. But as industry priorities shifted toward cloud infrastructure and enterprise services, funding for desktop-centric projects steadily plateaued.</p><p>This talk shares how the GNOME Foundation responded to this challenge by rethinking its financial model and launching its first major community-driven fundraising initiative. Inspired by KDE’s experiences, we recognized that depending primarily on corporate benefactors was no longer sustainable, and that long-term resilience required building strong grassroots support.</p><p>In this session, you’ll learn:</p><ul><li><p>How GNOME evaluated the decline in traditional sponsorships</p></li><li><p>The strategy behind designing our first community fundraising campaign</p></li><li><p>How we defined achievable KPIs and aligned them with real impact</p></li><li><p>Challenges we faced in engaging a diverse user base</p></li><li><p>What worked, what didn’t, and what other open-source communities can adopt immediately</p></li></ul>
