The Drop Times and Sponsorship Data

src/content/blog/sponsorship-data-droptimes.md

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+---
+title: "From a Single Chat to a Live Sponsorship Feed: DDEV's Sponsorship Data Story"
+pubDate: 2026-04-21
+summary: "How a request from TheDropTimes to track DDEV sponsorship data led to a web component, a public data feed, and live sponsor displays across DDEV properties."
+author: Randy Fay
+featureImage:
+  src: /img/blog/2026/04/tdt_banner.png
+  alt: DDEV sponsorship data displayed across web properties
+categories:
+  - Community
+  - Announcements
+---
+
+In January 2025, Anoop John of [TheDropTimes](https://www.thedroptimes.com/) sent a LinkedIn message that set things in motion:
+
+> "Happy New Year. I was thinking we could put a live sponsorship tracker for DDEV on TDT. We should ask for people for $5 per month and we need 1000 people to hit the target right? What do you think?"
+
+That message led to live, auto-updating DDEV sponsorship displays on multiple web properties, a public data repository, and a reusable web component—all feeding from a single source of truth.
+
+## The Challenge
+
+DDEV's financial sustainability depends entirely on sponsorships (we have no other income). Communicating that need—and showing progress toward goals—requires getting accurate, up-to-date data in front of people where they already spend time. We wouldn't really expect to be successful with manual updates across multiple web and CLI properties.
+
+What we needed was a data feed that could be consumed anywhere, updated (mostly) automatically, and displayed consistently.
+
+## The sponsorship-data Repository
+
+Anoop's request spurred the creation of [ddev/sponsorship-data](https://github.com/ddev/sponsorship-data), a public repository that aggregates sponsorship information from GitHub Sponsors and other sources, updated automatically. The data is published as structured JSON—for example, [all-sponsorships.json](https://ddev.github.io/sponsorship-data/data/all-sponsorships.json)—that any site or tool can consume.
+
+## Mark Conroy's Web Component
+
+[Mark Conroy](https://mark.ie/) stepped up with a reusable web component that reads from the sponsorship-data feed and renders live sponsorship information. The component lives at [web-components.mark.ie](https://web-components.mark.ie/) and is open source at [markconroy/web-components](https://github.com/markconroy/web-components). (DDEV has forked the original in order to maintain it for our particular uses.)
+
+The component makes it trivial to embed a live sponsor list on any site—no backend required, no manual updates.
+
+## Integration into DDEV Web Properties
+
+With the data feed and component in place, we integrated the live sponsor display into ddev.com. Since then, it has been added to [addons.ddev.com](https://addons.ddev.com) and [docs.ddev.com](https://docs.ddev.com). Source for each:
+
+- [ddev.com SponsorsBanner.astro](https://github.com/ddev/ddev.com/blob/main/src/components/SponsorsBanner.astro)
+- [addons.ddev.com sponsors-banner.html](https://github.com/ddev/addon-registry/blob/main/_includes/sponsors-banner.html)
+- [docs.ddev.com sponsors-banner.html](https://github.com/ddev/ddev/blob/main/docs/overrides/partials/sponsors-banner.html)
+
+Now, when sponsors join or leave, the banner updates automatically. No manual edits, no stale lists.
+
+## What `ddev start` Shows
+
+Most dedicated DDEV users aren't spending time on websites—they're in the terminal. `ddev start` has long provided a tip of the day, so we integrated the sponsorship feed into that output as well:
+
+![ddev start sponsorship status output](/img/blog/2026/04/ddev-start-sponsorship.png)
+
+Some people report watching the numbers change day to day, cheering the project toward its goal.
+
+## Why This Matters
+
+The sponsorship situation for DDEV is something we take seriously and we know you do also: the project needs ongoing financial support to continue development and be maintained over the long term. Getting that message in front of people—accurately and consistently—helps. We're all a community working together to make this work.
+
+The path from Anoop's January 2025 LinkedIn message to live sponsor feeds across multiple properties took a few months of work by community members who cared.
+
+## Thanks to Anoop, The Drop Times, and Mark Conroy
+
+More than a year later, [The Drop Times](https://www.thedroptimes.com/) is still featuring the DDEV sponsorship banner!
+
+![The Drop Times Sponsorship Banner](/img/blog/2026/04/tdt_banner.png)
+
+Thank you for your support, and thank you for your encouragement to go down this path. It has resulted in better communication with our community and a shared sense of ownership around DDEV's future.
+
+Mark, your packaging of a nice banner made things so much easier!
+
+## Join in
+
+If you use DDEV and find it valuable, consider sponsoring at [github.com/sponsors/ddev](https://github.com/sponsors/ddev). Every bit that you and your organization can contribute helps all of us. Thank you!