The Blender Development Fund is a donation platform. Individuals and organizations contribute to support Blender's development without acquiring decision-making power over the project's direction.
The Blender project sets its own strategic roadmap and yearly planning. This is done by the community of contributors together with the development and product leadership. When large donations come in, or when major organizations join the Fund, the existing planning can be accelerated or augmented, but the priorities themselves originate from the project.
Blender Foundation maintains a deliberate balance between individual and corporate donations. This balance ensures the Blender project's financial resilience and prevents the leverage that any single donor or category of donors could exert on the organization.
Corporate participation in the Development Fund does not imply alignment between Blender and the donor's mission, products, or strategy. That is not the purpose of the Fund. The only requirement for joining the Fund is to support Blender's mission: building the best 3D creation technology as free and open source software.
The project funding is handled transparently and detailed in the Blender Foundation annual reports.
For more information, reach out to foundation@blender.org.