We have a term for the reverse job: it's called "hiring someone". Rather than being paid to bring some non-monetary value (a job), you pay them to receive a non-monetary value (an employee or vendor). I'd be _VERY_ cautious about turning donations into sales. For most donors, you really do NOT want to give an accounting of the direct value you've provided, and instead want to focus on the indirect/long-term/global values that you're providing.

Listing them on team and contributor pages is a no-brainer: donations are valuable input, just like effort and creativity. Inviting them to working sessions, though, is confusing. Either they contribute value in these sessions, and you'd want them there even without the donation, or they detract and you're wasting your time and their money by having them there.

An anecdote, showing both working and non-working aspects of this: my wife worked (paid professional position) for a statewide food-bank-logistics charity, to which we also donated money to and volunteered for events at. It worked well for quite a while, but the three interactions were kept extremely separate. Even so, when there were some difficulties at work (it was a fast-growing organization and suffered the normal pains for that), and she left the job, it became quite uncomfortable to volunteer and our motivations for donations shifted as well.

I'd also avoid measuring the contribution as percentage of income - your needs and expenses (and normal-job salaries) are in absolute dollars, and people's contributions are not relative to their other interests/income/time.

Students of mafias (and taxation) find that 20-30% of income is the point where negative effects on the business' viability begin to show. I don't have citations handy.

Former Pakistani president Zardari was known as Mr. 10%. Christian churchs have a tradition of 10% tithes, and some successful churches use 'status as one who tithes' as a necessary criteria for (unpaid) positions of trust and responsibility within the organization of the church.

According to the film 'American Pimp', pimps in general demand 100% from their workers, rationalized with (paraphrasing to remove colorful language) 'I post 100% of bail, and provide 100% of a roof, so they need to be out earning 100%'.

I react negatively to the 50% ask, and upon reflection, suspect that this emotional reaction may be due to a feeling that this obligation resembles the one inflicted by an ex-wife in the American system.

Good luck!

On one hand, this doesn't sound completely novel (i.e. paid board seats and sponsors exist). But, it does seem noteworthy that this wasn't something I felt an affordance to look out for as a possibility, as a middle class person.

This sounds fairly similar to being on a board of a non-profit.

Did you find anyone to try this out? If so, how has it worked out so far?

Would love to see this attempted, although it seems that in order to be worthwhile the person would most likely have to be co-located with the team. Also, if the organisation later receives funding, the amount of prestige/influence of those taking this role will seem to drop or they might even become completely obsolete.

I think this is a cool idea and look forward to seeing it attempted.