Open source Community X and Threads competitor Mastodon will start experimenting with a new way to raise money: in-app donations. The organization announced Wednesday that it will launch a campaign to embed banner ads in its Android and iOS apps to encourage users to donate.
Initially, the feature will be available only to users on Mastodon.social and Mastodon.online, servers operated by the nonprofit Mastodon. Mastodon said the banner ads are easy to close and are only shown to users whose accounts have been registered for at least four weeks. The organization promises that it will not continually prompt users to donate.
These types of events can be effective for larger nonprofits. For example, the Wikimedia Foundation gets most of its funding from individual donors, including those who give through pop-up banners that occasionally appear on Wikipedia. However, Mastodon has a much smaller user base: 8.1 million registered accounts and less than 1 million monthly active users. Nonetheless, banner ads can encourage people who have never proactively sought out ways to donate to do so now, as it serves as an in-app feature, making the entire process more seamless.
Mastodon says they will later expand this campaign to the web and, if successful, roll it out to all other Mastodon instances. The latter will allow individual server administrators to receive support directly from their own users, which will help them maintain operations.
As an open, decentralized social media platform, Mastodon faces challenges in terms of financial support. Unlike Meta and X, which rely on advertising to operate, Mastodon has so far relied mainly on user donations from Patreon. Over the years, it has also accepted small donations from open source funds and foundations.
In 2023, Mastodon raised a total of €545,000 in donations, a 65% increase year-on-year, but its Patreon donor base dropped by almost 23% to 7,400 people. (Its 2024 report has not yet been released.) The decline could prompt it to consider a more aggressive fundraising strategy, especially amid growing competition from Meta and new entrants like venture-backed startup Bluesky.
A blog post from Mastodon said: "We know that raising funds can bring complexities and questions. We want to work with the community to explore how to do this well. This is not a corporate fundraiser: it is about ensuring a future of a more ethical and independent social network."