I am regularly in a position to control how funds for tech projects are spent. For example, choosing cloud infrastructure and such. I want to direct as much funding as possible to FOSS or FOSS friendly projects. The amount of money that I have control over in the company is way more than I could ever donate.
For example, I want to fund Linux kernel development, Postgres, language maintainers, etc.
I can’t convince companies to donate outright, but I could get them to buy a license or choose a different cloud provider or database provider.
I’m looking for ways to get money to people making a difference through legitimate channels that I can use to push internally.
EDIT:
Summary of my favorite options so far,
One thing that’s important to understand is that this is going to be a non-starter for a FOSS project that isn’t a 501c3, for most companies, for legal reasons. Charitable giving to 501c3s is defensible spending because of the impact on taxes. (Yay Crapitalism!)
You’d probably have more success onboarding them as a contractor doing “implementation support”.
Also, imo big projects like Linux and postgres are doing fine, and it’s the small tool creators that need support.
Exactly the problem, except I end up in greedy companies often. Donations are harder to arrange than business contracts.