Excited to share another changelog post today of the efforts we’ve shipped over the last two weeks. Focusing on removing friction for backers to fund even more towards your impactful open source efforts. Let’s dig into it.

New funding page

We redesigned the funding page from the ground up and think it’s a pretty fantastic update. Supporting all the features mentioned below (and some easter eggs to come soon). Check it out.

Fund on completion

Up until now, there has only been one way to fund open source issues with Polar: Upfront. Backers had to pay directly when they wanted to help fund a specific effort. Polar would then hold those funds until you - the maintainer - marked the issue as completed before paying it out (pending a review period for the backers).

That’s great, but not always... As a maintainer, you might want it to reach a certain funding goal before backers part with their money. You also want it to be accessible to all potential backers and some of them are less comfortable paying upfront.

So we’re introducing pledges. Now, backers can choose to fund an issue upon completion. Meaning they make a pledge upfront, but payment first once it’s due via invoicing - after the issue has been marked completed.

Backers will be required to have a connected GitHub account to use this funding method. So you can see who has made a pledge within your dashboard (spoiler alert - see below). Email-only (guest) funding is still available, but only with the upfront funding method.

Social funding

We’ve updated the design of our dashboard and badge to highlight the awesome backers who are supporting your open source efforts. Some well-deserved recognition for them and some helpful insights to you.

Magic link sign-in for backers

In our last changelog, we announced a dedicated dashboard for backers to keep track of their funded issues, get personal recommendations on additional ones to fund and more. However, it required them to have signed up with a GitHub account.

Not anymore. Backers can now sign in using magic links. Supporting a better experience and upgrade path to all of your backers.

Credit card on file

Backers can now seamlessly & securely save their payment method details on file (via Stripe). Offering one-click funding in the future. Combined with quick payment of invoices for their pledges once they’re due.

Together, we believe these features remove a lot of friction for backers which in turn opens the door for more funding toward your awesome initiatives which is our mission here at Polar.

Finally, this week we planned the roadmap ahead for our next quarter based on our North Star, and we can’t wait to ship everything we have in store.

Until next time,

/ Polar Team