The Call for Community Fundraising to Accelerate Moodle for Education Globally

PERTH, October 31, 2014 (Newswire.com) - Popular learning platform Moodle, turns to the community to help accelerate development of the software. Used by over many millions around the world, the free software is funded by the network of Moodle Partners and ad hoc contributions from the community. Seeking to accelerate the growth of the platform, Moodle is calling for donations in the form of pledges and t-shirts. 

In the 12 years since its first version, Moodle has been adopted by many renowned organisations across the globe, including Australia National University, California State Universities, London School of Economics, Mount Sinai Hospital, Shell, Mazda, ING, Allianz, and Open University just to name a few you might know. Importantly, it’s also used by many thousands of small schools worldwide, many of whom can’t afford commercial software. Funded primarily by the network of Moodle Partners, the call for fundraising comes from the desire to improve Moodle faster for the users. 

"We've been successful in providing accessible and open source software for educators across the globe to connect and engage with students online. We're now catering to a large and diverse audience, with equally large and diverse needs. However the world is moving quickly and we want to keep open source software at the forefront of usability and functionality."

Martin Dougiamas, Founder & CEO

“We’ve been successful in providing accessible and open source software  for educators across the globe to connect and engage with students online” commented Martin. “We’re now catering to a large and diverse audience, with equally large and diverse needs. However the world is moving quickly and we want to keep open source software at the forefront of usability and functionality..”

Moodle makes  new releases every six months, translated into over 100 languages and catering for primary school, high school, tertiary, corporations, government and many others.

Moodle’s fundraising is calling for direct pledges on their community site through PayPal and uniquely via clothing sold on  merchandising site Fabrily, with a profit per item sold. Moodle claims that this provides options for contributors and avoids the admin and fees of other sites. The fundraising drive for the custom shirt runs for 28 days, with donations accepted at any time. 

“If each of even just the registered Moodle sites gave just $10 or purchased one t-shirt, we’d have 20 more developers for a year to help make Moodle into what our users are asking for.” said Mr. Dougiamas.

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