Ghostty is now fiscally sponsored by Hack Club, a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit.

Fiscal sponsorship is a legal and financial arrangement in which a recognized non-profit extends its tax-exempt status to a project that aligns with its mission. This allows Ghostty to operate as a charitable initiative while Hack Club manages compliance, donations, accounting, and governance oversight.

Being non-profit clearly demonstrates our commitment to keeping Ghostty free and open source for everyone. It paves the way for a model for sustainable development beyond my personal involvement. And it also provides important legal protections and assurances to the people and communities that adopt and use Ghostty.

---

Why a Non-Profit?

Since the beginning of the project in 2023 and the private beta days of Ghostty, I've repeatedly expressed my intention that Ghostty legally become a non-profit. This intention stems from several core beliefs I have.

First, I want to lay bricks for a sustainable future for Ghostty that doesn't depend on my personal involvement technically or financially. Financially, I am still the largest donor to the project, and I intend to remain so, but a non-profit structure allows others to contribute financially without fear of misappropriation or misuse of funds (as protected by legal requirements and oversight from the fiscal sponsor).

Second, I want to squelch any possible concerns about a "rug pull". A non-profit structure provides enforceable assurances: the mission cannot be quietly changed, funds cannot be diverted to private benefit, and the project cannot be sold off or repurposed for commercial gain. The structure legally binds Ghostty to the public-benefit purpose it was created to serve.

Finally, despite being decades-old technology, terminals and terminal-related technologies remain foundational to modern computing and software infrastructure. They're often out of the limelight, but they're ever present on developer machines, embedded in IDEs, visible as read-only consoles for continuous integration and cloud services, and still one of the primary ways remote access is done on servers around the world.

I believe infrastructure of this kind should be stewarded by a mission-driven, non-commercial entity that prioritizes public benefit over private profit. That structure increases trust, encourages adoption, and creates the conditions for Ghostty to grow into a widely used and impactful piece of open-source infrastructure.

---

What This Means For Ghostty

From a technical perspective, nothing changes for Ghostty. Our technical goals for the project remain the same, the license (MIT) remains the same, and we continue our work towards better Ghostty GUI releases and libghostty.

Financially, Ghostty can now accept tax-deductible donations in the United States. This opens up new avenues for funding the project and sustaining development over the long term. Most immediately, I'm excited to begin compensating contributors, but I also intend to support upstream dependencies, fund community events, and pay for boring operational costs.

All our financial transactions will be transparent down to individual transactions for both inflows and outflows. You can view our public ledger at Ghostty's page on Hack Club Bank. At the time of writing, this is empty, but you'll soon see some initial funding from me and the beginning of paying for some of our operational costs.

All applicable names, marks, and intellectual property associated with Ghostty have been transferred to Hack Club and are now owned under the non-profit umbrella. Copyright continues to be held by individual contributors under the continued and existing license structure.

From a leadership perspective, I remain the project lead and final authority on all decisions, but as stated earlier, the creation of a non-profit structure lays the groundwork for an eventual future beyond this model.

---

Supporting Hack Club

As our fiscal sponsor, Hack Club provides essential services to Ghostty, including accounting, legal compliance, and governance oversight. To support this, 7% of all donations to Ghostty go to Hack Club to cover these costs in addition to supporting their broader mission of empowering young people around the world interested in technology and coding.

In the words of Zach Latta, Hack Club's founder and executive director this is a "good-for-good" trade. Instead of donor fees going to a for-profit management company or covering pure overhead of a single project, the fees go to another non-profit doing important work in the tech community and the overhead is amortized across many projects.

In addition to the 7% fees, my family is personally donating $150,000 directly to the Hack Club project¹ (not to Ghostty within it). Hack Club does amazing work and I would've supported them regardless of their fiscal sponsorship of Ghostty, but I wanted to pair these two things together to amplify the impact of both.

---

Donate

Please consider donating to support Ghostty's continued development.

I recognize that Ghostty is already in an abnormally fortunate position to have myself as a backer, but I do envision a future where Ghostty is more equally supported by a broader community. And with our new structure, you can be assured about the usage of your funds towards public-benefit goals.

This post isn't meant to directly be a fundraising pitch so it is purposely lacking critical details about our funding goals, budget, project goals, project metrics, etc. I'll work on those in the future. In the mean time, if you're interested in talking more about supporting Ghostty, please email me at m@mitchellh.com.

---

Thank You

I'm thankful for Hack Club and their team for working with us to make this happen. I'm also thankful for the Ghostty community who has supported this project and has trusted me and continues to trust me to steward it responsibly.

For more information about Ghostty's non-profit structure, see the dedicated page on Ghostty's website.

Footnotes

1. We haven't finalized the transfer of the funds yet, but it is initiated and will be completed in the coming weeks. ↩