Introduction
While the Internet is a great tool for helping people collaborate, it is still extremely difficult for groups to collect funds and use them transparently. As a result, we see initiatives, projects, and movements popping up here and there only to disappear quickly due to a lack of funds. Imagine how many wonderful things didn't happen because funding (which is arguably the oxygen for most organizations) is difficult to sustain. Without an easy way to raise and manage finances, most of the ideas that can change the world are rarely able to break open from seed, let alone grow into a full-fledged tree.
To be able to operate, meetups, open-source projects, parent associations, neighbourhood associations, pet projects, clubs, unions, movements, non-profits, business incubators - all are either forced to use a physical glass jar, asking a sponsor to directly pay for their expenses or front the huge overhead of setting up and managing a corporation or a non-profit. Even if they manage to achieve it in a way that is neither inefficient nor opaque, it is overkill.
This is the problem that Open Collective solves. We enable groups to quickly set up a collective, raise funds and manage them transparently.
We want all those seeds to have a chance to grow and give the ideas a fighting chance to reach their true potential. We believe everyone should have the tools to create the organizations of tomorrow. And we are dedicating ourselves to make that happen!
- From the democracy of our voices, to the democracy of our actions - Xavier Damman, Crowdsourcing Week, Luleå (Sweden) March 2018
- Reducing the Friction for Citizens to Create Associations and Sustain Them - Xavier Damman, iMAL, Brussels November 2017
Open Collective is a platform where communities can collect and disburse money transparently, to sustain and grow their projects.
The Internet has been really good at helping people do great things together. But things still get complicated once money is involved. These challenges hold communities back from getting all the support they need from supporters and sponsors to achieve their mission.
We enable communities to have economic power, so they can sustain themselves and have a larger impact on the world.
- It's fully transparent (you can see where money comes from and where it goes).
- Designed for ongoing collaborative communities, not one-off campaigns or individual creators.
- Open source and designed for financial and technical transparency.
Our platform provides tools for legal entities to fiscally sponsor Collectives under their umbrella, empowering people to create associations without friction. It's like an API between the legacy world of banks and taxes and the emerging future of digitally powered distributed collaborations.
People can contribute from anywhere by credit card, with donations denominated in the currency of the Fiscal Host. Payouts work everywhere our payment providers, Stripe and PayPal, serve.
Yes! One main purpose of Open Collective is to provide unincorporated projects with the legal and financial structures to provide people receipts and invoices.
For starters, we are believers in the open-source philosophy. Our code is open source, and so are the Collectives we host. We think transparency in technology and finances is important.
Additionally, regulations are different all over the world. Our platform is the API between Collectives and things like governments, banks, payment processors, and taxes, which vary a lot by country, so it has to be adaptable to different requirements.
We are an open-source project and run as an Open Collective ourselves. You can contribute money, code or translations. And we'd really love it if you started your own Collective and contributed by growing the community!
Last modified 9mo ago