Collective Goals & Tiers

With the implementation of the new Dashboard interface, we are currently in the process of updating our documentation and some pages may be out of date. Thank you for your patience. Please contact our support team if you need any assistance.

Goals

You can define goals to share an overview of your financial plan with your community and to track your progress.

Collective Goals will be sent in the emails sent to your contributors, and you can adjust their visibility on your Collective's settings.

To create your own Collective goals, go to your Collective profile, click on Settings and then on Collective Goals.

You can choose between three different visual options.

Auto: Will switch from Logarithm to Linear when 30% of the goal is achieved.

Logarithm: Will make the progress bar appear larger to incentivise new contributions. This is backed by social proof.

Linear: Exact visual representation.

How to Create a Goal

To create a goal, give it a title, select a type:

Balance goals are based on your current balance.
Yearly budget goals are based on your estimated annual budge

it as either a goal balance or yearly budget, specify the amount you need and add a description. Don't forget to save your changes when you're done!

Tiers

Tiers can be used to provide perks and rewards to supporters, set membership fees, build funding drives (when used with goals), or simply categorise your contributions. You can control tiers by accessing the Tiers section in your collectives Settings:

Enabling flexible contributions

You can define whether you can to allow flexible contributions or not by manipulating the Enable flexible contributions checkbox.

Creating custom tiers

You can also create custom tiers on the same page. Click on add another tier:

A preview of the tier you are creating will appear alongside your the configured settings:

Configuring Tiers

The following options are available when creating a new tier:

Type

Generic, membership, service, product, donation.

Name

e.g. Gold Sponsor, Member, Supporter. This is the only required field to add a new Tier with the default values; all others are optional.

Description

Important information for Financial Contributors such as what does this tier mean or which rewards are included.

Interval

The frequency in which such contribution will be charged. It can be a one time contribution, a monthly one, yearly or flexible.

Amount type

Fixed or flexible. Flexible amounts can be adjusted by users as they wish.

Suggested amounts

Suggestions for contributors to pick from.

Default amount

A preset starting amount.

Minimum amount

The minimum amount allowed for this contribution, if any.

Available quantity

For limited edition contributions (such as special edition items, one-time events, etc).

Button text

The action word on the Tier card users click (such as donate, join, contribute). You can also add emojis if you wish!

Goal

Target amount you're trying to raise in this Tier.

Force standalone page

You can create a standalone page for the tier to send as a direct link to potential contributors:

You can access it from your Collective page by clicking on Read more.

Edit and delete a tier

To edit a tier, click on the 'Edit Tier' Button.

To delete a tier, click the delete button in the bottom left-hand corner

Don't forget to save your changes.

Support Tiers

A great way of having more companies supporting your project is by offering them a support tier, where you offer access to support in exchange for financial contributions. Companies may or may not use it but it gives them the peace of mind to have someone who knows the codebase very available to help them within a reasonable time frame.

An example is Babel's Base Support Sponsor tier.

Here is a template for a basic support tier for your collective:

Become a Base Support Sponsor with a yearly donation of $24,000 ($2k/month paid in full upfront). Get your logo on our README on Github and on the front page of our website, as well as access to up to 2 hours of support per month. Support will be remote with the option of a share screen or via private chat.

With the above tier example, your responsibilities as a Collective are:

Adding the sponsor's logo on your website
Engaging with them to provide the support you've agreed to via the channels specified

The Sponsor's responsibilities are:

Contacting you via the specified channels
Limiting their support requirements to the time slots specified
Scheduling the time slots at least a week in advance

FAQ

For Collectives

How do I define the price?

It depends on a lot of things but mainly on how critical is your open source project to the organization (which is arguably quite subjective). We recommend starting at $500/month with a yearly commitment ($6k upfront) for access to two hours of support a month. As you grow, you can start increasing the price.

Why a yearly commitment?

It's easier for companies to budget services for the year. It also ensures that they contribute to the maintenance of the project.

What happens if I delete a tier?

If you delete a tier that has recurring contributing members, you will continue to receive contributions from those members. These donations will appear as "custom contributions".

Members will need to stop recurring payments from their accounts. Here is more information on how to cancel a recurring contribution.

For companies

By subscribing to a support tier, you not only get private time for your team to discuss the open-source project that you depend upon, but you are also helping the collective to maintain it. It's a great way to balance your interests with the interests of the community.