Effectively raising money to work on improvements to Drupal (reverse bounty)

So, you have a great idea for Drupal but can't take any time away from your "day job" to work on it. Fear not! This page will focus on some effective tools to raise money from the Drupal community to allow you to work on your beloved Drupal improvement.

Post a reverse bounty

A reverse bounty is an idea and feature description of something that a developer actually wants to work on, along with the money required to complete the task. The developer knows that it can be done, knows what the platform can do, and has the skills to actually implement it. The money allows them to dedicate time to actually work on it.

To learn more about the concept, take a look at Boris Mann's blog post on reverse bounties.

Post your idea in the paid Drupal services forum, and see if you can raise some interest first.

Show me the money!

Once you have an idea, you also need to quickly and effectively raise money to work on it. There are many ways a developer can raise money.

ChipIn

I'm going to focus on my favorite, ChipIn. With ChipIn, you can create a donation widget where people can easily see what you're raising money for, how much you need, how much has been donated, who's donated, and when you need it by (see the screen shot to the right). They take a service fee, but it's comparable to what PayPal charges for most accounts.

PayPal

PayPal is still a solid way to accept money, and although it doesn't give you the sweet widget data like ChipIn it's familiar territory for any scaredy-cats.

Complete the work

With reverse bounties, most of the time the developer gets paid in full (or a deposit of 50%) before doing the work. As the developer, you have to be trust-worthy and complete the work in a reasonable amount of time.