Yesterday I decided to invest €22 (about $32) to join the Drupal Association. The mission of the Drupal Association is, "to help manage the infrastructure, funding, and promotion of the community-driven project in order for it to continue to flourish."

The money is well spent. The Drupal platform has become an integral part of most of my social media projects. Drupal has helped me to do things with websites that otherwise would have cost me a lot more time and thousands of dollars in costs for contract developers.

The Drupal community is a robust one and it's very important that the server power and technical knowledge is in place to keep the community running smoothly. I think that the membership system is a good way to support those needs.

What about WordPress? I use WordPress quite a bit as well. This site is powered by WordPress. As far as I know there isn't an official WordPress association accepting donations. If there were a WordPress association I think that would be a worthwhile effort to support as well.