Drupal Association Proposes Broader Certification and Maintainers Fund

Organisations using Drupal could be recognised for their technical, financial and advocacy contributions under a proposed expansion of the Drupal Association's certification programme. Interim CEO Tiffany Farriss outlined plans to develop a broader Drupal Certified registry and establish a maintainers fund in remarks published by the Association on 28 October 2026. The proposal would link certification to shared maintenance practices and provide a route for organisations without in-house development capacity to support maintainers financially.

Farriss wants to move beyond the existing Drupal Certified Partner programme, which she said is often perceived as being intended primarily for smaller Drupal agencies. Under Farriss’s proposed Drupal Certified framework, a registry would recognise three forms of participation: makers who contribute to the project, patrons who provide financial support, and advocates who promote Drupal. Recognition criteria would be adjusted according to the sector and the types of contributions organisations can reasonably make. During a Talking Drupal interview published on 22 October 2026, Farriss identified hosting providers, third-party integration companies, global systems integrators, agencies and individual contributors among the groups the expanded programme could recognise.

The proposed certification framework would also introduce common expectations around maintaining Drupal software. Farriss identified contributing fixes upstream, responding to the Drupal Security Team, maintaining relevant issue queues and keeping Drupal installations current as practices that certified organisations would be expected to follow. Organisations with developers could fulfil these responsibilities internally. For those without sufficient development capacity, Farriss proposed establishing a maintainers fund through which the Association could help direct financial support towards maintainers of modules that organisations use or maintain.

The fund would offer organisations a possible route to finance module maintenance without carrying out the work themselves. Farriss did not specify funding commitments, eligibility thresholds, payment arrangements or rules for selecting maintainers. The Association already offers a contribution sponsorship programme through which organisations can support core contributors and receive contribution credits for qualifying work. How the proposed fund would relate to that existing mechanism, including whether financial support could satisfy specific certification requirements, remains undefined.

The current Drupal Certified Partner programme continues to publish six contribution tiers, from Bronze to Top Tier, based on annual weighted contribution credits. Organisations must meet the applicable credit threshold and submit a qualifying case study, while annual participation fees range from $1,500 to $25,000 according to workforce size, with possible regional adjustments. These requirements remain publicly listed as of 28 October 2026. The Association has not published replacement eligibility criteria, a revised fee schedule or transition arrangements for existing partners; the proposed framework has not replaced the current programme.

Farriss connected the proposed changes to the cost of sustaining Drupal's shared infrastructure and volunteer maintenance work. She estimated that the Association provides approximately $10 in services per Drupal site annually, of which it raises about $7.50, while community maintenance and security work contributes another estimated $30 per site. She argued that the existing model places a disproportionate burden on the 126 organisations she identified as Drupal Certified Partners. These figures are Farriss's estimates of shared support and contributed work, not fees charged to Drupal site owners.

The certification proposal adds more specific organisational responsibilities to the funding direction Farriss previously discussed with The DropTimes in July 2026. In that interview, she proposed programme-level cost accounting and explored usage-based funding for enterprise-facing utility and infrastructure services. The DropTimes also reported provisions of her interim agreement requiring Finance Committee review and full Board approval for changes to partner-programme pricing, benefits, structure or terms. The October remarks establish the direction Farriss wants to pursue but do not document formal approval of the replacement programme or the maintainers fund.

Farriss said Drupal would remain freely available under the GNU General Public License, with security advisories and patches accessible regardless of an organisation's financial contributions. She described the next six months as a period in which the Association intends to develop how contributions and responsibilities are recorded and recognised publicly. The proposed changes would broaden certification beyond recognition of existing partners to document how different participants contribute to maintaining the Drupal ecosystem. The detailed criteria, funding mechanism and implementation timetable remain to be established.