So as promised (though delayed), there are few things to unwrap here.
So the reason that “Sponsor” button shows up for CXXWrap.jl is that there is a FUNDING.yml file in the repo. The content of the repo points to a page on Salsa labs, that asks for a few details, including which project you would like to offer support to. The fact is that we receive very few donations via Salsa Labs – only a handful of transactions in the last year. And the vast majority of those leave that field blank. There is probably only one vague reference to a particular project for a small donation.
These days we much prefer to receive donations via Github directly. You can see the setting here: .github/FUNDING.yml at master · JuliaLang/.github · GitHub. Using that mechanism, we don’t ask for project targets, it is more obvious that the money is going into a single Julia project pot.
This is important because it’s the Julia project that is affiliated with NumFOCUS (as is SciML and Flux, separately). Even if a funding is for a particular project, the money cannot be directly transferred to the project owner – it needs to go through NumFOCUS’s process, which generally requires a statement of work and a contract at least. NumfOCUS needs to conduct some due dilligence to maintain it’s non-profit status. It’s not difficult – Pluto for example received a directed corporate donation, which we used to pay some Pluto developers last year. But I just mean to say that we cannot redirect a stream of cash automatically. So if you want direct payments, you are better off signing up yourself to the github sponsor program yourself.
Having said that, if you, or anyone else needs funding for any of your Julia open source work, reach out to me or Logan. Our resources are limited, but within that, we do try to do grants for impactful work when we can, from Julia project resources. This year, our main contribution has been towards Makie. We also can apply for external grants (eg, the NumFOCUS small dev grants, which has funded some Documenter work among others.). At the very least, we are happy discussing options.
Hope this helps. Thanks for asking the question, I’m happy to provide more clarifications if needed.
Regards
Avik