Neovim operates a campaign to fund ongoing development. This makes it possible for core developers to work full-time for a month or longer, accelerating projects like Lua stdlib, treesitter parser engine, LSP framework, extended marks, embedded terminal, job control, RPC API, and remote UIs. Sponsorship is also used to maintain (very minimal) infrastructure costs for the Neovim project, such as hosting fees.

Donations are managed via open collective, which provides public tracking for all expenses. Bitcoin transactions are visible on the blockchain explorer. The only donation options for neovim are via GitHub sponsors, open collective, and Bitcoin. All prior funding sources have been transferred into open collective.

Funded work is a way to support active contributors who have weeks of time to focus on the project. This opportunity is available to contributors who have a developed a reputation for reliable, high-quality contributions (code/documentation, GitHub review comments, and GitHub technical discussions; not IRC or other "ephemeral" places). It works like this: funded contributors are expected to focus full-time for weeks or even months, yielding tangible, high-quality contributions, with conspicuous, reliable, regular activity on GitHub.