Honestly, I'd guess that it would hurt more than it would help. People tend to put things into mental buckets of monetary-based or favor-based relationships. For example, I wouldn't agree to do 4-5 hours of manual labor in exchange for $20. On the other hand, I would help a friend move to a new house/apartment for snacks and pizza. Those two have the same level of monetary reward, but one is being judged as a social tradeoff.<p>There was a study about a neighborhood daycare center that was trying to avoid parents being late to pick up their kids. The daycare instituted a penalty fee if a parent is late to the pick-up. From an economic perspective, this is a larger cost, and should result in one-time pick-ups. Instead, people were consistently later in picking up their kids. Before money was added to the equation, it was "Person X, who I know and enjoy talking with, is troubled when I am late. To avoid hurting their feelings, I should be on time." After, the situation changed to "Being 30 minutes late is a $10 fee. I still need to get groceries today, and that is worth $10." By thinking of it in monetary terms, people stopped considering each other as much as people. Even when the fee was removed, the damage had already been done, and the late pick-ups continued.<p>My guess is that you might get a few more contributors here and there, but it would turn off more than would start.<p>For me personally, I've spent time fixing bugs in open-source javascript libraries that I happened to notice while browsing. It would have felt a bit off had there been a monetary reward, because that wasn't why I made the bugfix. Or one time I made a character builder for an out-of-print RPG system, and was beaming for weeks at being mentioned in that company's weekly newsletter. Had they tossed me $50 for it, objectively I would have been better off, but rather put out. $50 would have shifted it from a social exchange into a working exchange, and not one that valued the months of evenings/weekends that were spent in development.<p>That said, a lot of it depends on the amount. Other posters have recommended reaching out to offer part-time jobs to contributors. This sounds like a reasonable route, so long as it is at a reasonable hourly rate for the full time contributors put in, not just the difference from before. Remember, by making the offer you are taking away the entire social exchange, and need to make a good enough offer to counteract that effect.