FAQ
Specific questions
- for collectives
- for submitting expenses and invoices to a collective
- for backers (individuals and organizations)
- for hosts
- about the company
What is Open Collective?
It's an online platform for open and transparent communities. We provide the tools to raise money and share your finance in full transparency.
How much does it cost?
Like most other crowdfunding platforms, Open Collective takes a 5% commission which doesn't include the payment processor fees (Stripe, PayPal).
If you decide to have your collective hosted by someone else, the host may charge an addition commission for managing bookkeeping, taxes, and admin (fiscal sponsorship). For example, the Open Source Collective charges 5% to host open source projects around the world and facilitate invoicing with big tech companies like Facebook, AirBnB, Coinbase, etc. Women Who Code is charging 10% to enable groups of women around the world to create a local Women Who Code Chapter to teach each other how to code. They also provide other services like a job board, events, etc.
Where can I read more about Open Collective?
Our blog is a good place to read more about Open Collective: https://medium.com/open-collective. Few blog posts to highlight:
- A New Form of Association for the Internet Generation that talks about the original idea for Open Collective and the need to provide a new form of association that can be created as easily as a Facebook group and that gets out of the way, so that communities can focus on their purpose.
- A New Way to Fund Open Source Projects that talks about why simply putting a PayPal email doesn't work to raise funds for an open source community
- Ten Steps to Successful Open Source Crowdfunding: money doesn't magically falls down from trees. This post provides a list of tips and tricks to be successful at fundraising for your open source project.
See also our About Page.
More questions?
Please don't hesitate to send us a note to [email protected] or on Slack if you can't find answers to your questions in this FAQ.