What is the Community Giving Program?
The program is just starting, so in many ways, we are defining it right now as we move along. Reading this blog regularly will give you a sense of how the program is developing, and more importantly, allow you to comment and participate in its formation.

How much will the program be giving?
The early idea is that our support will needs-based. We are going to find the volunteers in our community who have been and are helping Mozilla and ask them what they need. We will find out what they could use to make their volunteer efforts easier and more effective and we’ll provide that to them.

How does Mozilla find volunteers it might help?
Using our network of contributors and web tools like Bugzilla, we have a good sense of who is out there and who is doing what. We’ll ask what is needed and then ask who else is out there who we should meet.

Who decides what Mozilla gives?
First we need to find what is needed, then we’ll find out what is reasonable by categorizing the requests. We will then figure out what to give, likely by reaching consensus from many of the key contributors of various projects.

What will Mozilla give?
We’ll see what people need, but we have a sense it will be a combination of in-kind support, like hardware or software, and grants or donations.

How can you help?
Read this blog. Comment and participate in the program’s formation.

What if we miss someone?
If you believe you have been a critical contributor, please email me (stb@mozilla.com). We don’t want to miss any one who has made critical contributions and we think we’ll get to most people by running queries and emailing teams. And, from comments I’ve seen in my blog and from what I can gather from others, it will be up to the peers and team leaders to confirm if someone has been a key contributor.

What happens after the first cut at finding people?
As far as supporting key contributors, what happens going forward if new volunteers surface after our initial outreach? Do we continue to run queries and ping others to find people? Or, should we create a nomination process? Many believe that a community giving program should become a permanent part of our organization. Please send me your opinions on this one. My thought is that a formal nomination process through an on-line platform might be best (something like a public email address to submit volunteer names), but I would like to hear your thoughts and critique.

What else will the Community Giving Program be doing?
There is a lot we can investigate. I’ve mentioned that we want to bring people together from the community so they can meet in person to discuss new ideas and existing projects. Also, some have suggested supporting outside projects that are open-source, volunteer-based, but not specifically Mozilla projects. Can we help external people or projects in some fashion that enables them to maintain their work? At Mozilla, there are a lot of open-source projects that we use to support our work. How do we positively interact those program? I would really like to hear people’s thoughts on this point. It will help craft our strategy. If you have a thought, please post it.

Mozilla will treat support in the form of hardware, software, et al. as a business expense, alleviating any tax expense to the recipient?

We are creating a community giving program to support the Mozilla community and to try to remove any barriers that contributors might face. We are covering all bases to ensure that there will be little to no tax liability or any other obligations contributors are required to meet.

When a contributor receives specific support mentioned above, does it mean that they now have special responsibilities (besides being a volunteer for the Mozilla Project)?

The support we send out is meant to help those people continue to be productive contributors to their aspect of the Mozilla project. We are not signing up anyone up to any contract or required work effort. If we send out hardware, we will track it and we will ask for it to be returned to Mozilla if it is not used to work primarily on Mozilla-related projects.

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