contributionsmonthly

Contributionsmonthly is a time-series metric used to quantify the total number or value of contributions to a defined project, organization, or initiative during each calendar month. A contribution is any unit of activity the project defines as meaningful and may include code commits, pull requests, issue comments, documentation edits, translations, financial donations, and new user sign-ups. The precise set of contribution types is typically documented in a governance or analytics guide.

Calculation and scope: For each month, contributionsmonthly aggregates all contributions whose timestamps fall within that month, commonly using UTC boundaries. Projects may track separate components (for example code, documentation, or donations) and may normalize totals by the number of active contributors to support fair comparisons over time or across projects.

Applications: The metric helps maintainers and sponsors assess engagement, monitor the impact of outreach or release campaigns, and communicate progress. It can be presented as a line chart showing monthly trends or broken down by contribution type, contributor, or region.

Limitations: Because there is no universal standard for which activities count, comparisons across projects can be misleading. Bot activity, automated scripts, or batch processes can inflate the figure, and seasonality around releases or fundraising cycles can skew interpretation. Clear documentation of the contribution types and measurement rules is essential. See also related metrics such as monthly active contributors, commit frequency, and donation totals.