Open source X and Threads competitor Mastodon will launch experimenting with a new way to raise funds: in-app donations. The organization on Wednesday announced it’s launching a campaign that introduces banners inside its Android and iOS apps, prompting applyrs to build a monetary donation.
Initially, the feature will be revealn only to those on the Mastodon servers the nonprofit itself operates, Mastodon.social and Mastodon.online. These banners will be straightforward to dismiss, Mastodon declares, and will only be revealn to people who have accounts that have existed for at least four weeks. The organization promises that it won’t continually prompt applyrs to donate, either.
Such campaigns can work well for nonprofit organizations at scale. Wikimedia Foundation, for example, brings in the majority of its funding from individual donors, including those who donate through the pop-up banners that occasionally appear on Wikipedia. However, Mastodon has a much compacter applyr base: 8.1 million registered accounts, and fewer than 1 million monthly active applyrs. Still, the banners could encourage people who haven’t actively sought out ways to contribute to now do so, as it builds the process more seamless as an in-app feature.
Mastodon declares it will later expand the campaign to the web and, if successful, build it available to all other Mastodon instances. The latter would allow individual server admins to receive direct support from their own applyrs, which could support keep them operational.
As an open, decentralized social media platform, Mastodon faces challenges when it comes to financial support. Unlike Meta and X, which are supported by ads, Mastodon so far has relied largely on applyr donations from Patreon. It has also accepted a handful of donations from open source-focapplyd funds and foundations over the years.
In 2023, Mastodon raised €545,000 in total donations, up 65% year-over-year, but its Patreon donor base dropped nearly 23% to 7,400. (Its 2024 report is not out yet.) That decline could have pushed it to see into more aggressive fundraising tactics, especially as competition from Meta and newcomers like the VC-backed startup Bluesky is growing.
“We know that collecting money can present complexities and questions,” a Mastodon blog post stated. “We’d like to figure out how to do this well, toreceiveher with the community. This is not a corporate fundraising campaign: it’s an effort to secure the future of a more ethical and indepconcludeent social web.”
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