🚨 This documentation is out of date.
View our New Documentation!
Open Collective Docs
Go back to Open Collective
  • Welcome
  • About
    • Introduction
    • Documentation
    • Terminology
    • Company
    • Pricing
    • Team
    • The Open Collective Way
      • Mission and Values
      • Community Guidelines
    • Hiring
    • Investors
    • Contributing
    • Refund Policy
    • Contact Us
  • Product
    • Features
    • Roadmap
    • Comparison
    • User Profile
    • Dashboard
      • Preview Features
    • Currencies
    • Log-in System
    • Privacy Policy
    • Moderation
    • Security
    • Ledger
      • Individual Transactions
      • Transaction Pairs, Groups & Perspectives
      • Viewing Transactions
      • Exporting Transactions
      • Fiscal Host Ledger Perspective
      • Contributions in the Ledger
      • Added Funds in the Ledger
      • Expenses in the Ledger
      • Ledger Changelog
    • Notifications
    • Two-factor Authentication
    • Activity Log
  • Collectives
    • Collectives FAQ
    • Creating a Collective
    • Quick Start Guide
    • Collective Settings
      • Customize Collective
      • Team
      • Collective Goals & Tiers
      • Expense Policy
      • Data Export
      • Security
      • Integrations
      • Zero Collective Balance
      • Closing a Collective
    • Add Fiscal Host
    • Change Fiscal Host
    • Open Source Collectives
      • Setting up GitHub Sponsors
    • Transparent Budget
    • Expenses
    • Updates & Comms
    • Custom Email
    • Moderation
    • Conversations
    • Events
    • Projects
    • Funding Options
    • Buttons & Banners
    • Connected Collectives
    • Contribution flow
  • Financial Contributors
    • Financial Contributors FAQ
    • Guest contributions
    • Payments
    • Platform Tips
    • Website Badge
    • Receipts
    • Collective to Collective
    • Organizations
      • Organization FAQ
      • Funds
      • Bulk Transfers
      • Gift Cards
      • Sustainer Resources
  • Expenses & Getting Paid
    • Expenses FAQ
    • Submitting Expenses
      • Inviting a third-party to submit an Expense
    • Expense Comments
    • Edit or Download an Expense
    • Receiving payment through Payoneer or Wise
    • Tax Information
  • Fiscal Hosts
    • Fiscal Hosts FAQ
    • Becoming a Fiscal Host
    • Creating a Fiscal Host
    • Organisation Settings
      • Info
      • Customize Profile Page
      • Connect external accounts
      • Accounting Categories
      • Security
      • Manage updates
      • Policies
    • Fiscal Host Dashboard
      • Expenses
      • Financial contributions
      • Pending applications
      • Hosted Collectives
      • Vendors
      • Transaction Report
        • Reports
    • Receiving Money
      • Bank Transfers
      • Credit Card
      • Add Funds Manually
      • Expected Funds
    • Payouts
      • Virtual Card Settings
      • Payouts with PayPal
      • Payouts with Wise
      • Two-factor authentication for payouts
      • Refunds
    • Host Fees
    • Local Tax Support
    • Agreement Templates
  • Independent Collectives
    • About Independent Collectives
    • Create an Independent Collective
      • Migrate from Self-Hosted to Independent Collective
      • Migrate from a Fiscal Host to Independent Collective
    • Independent Collective Setup
    • Independent Collective Management
      • Money coming in: Contributions
      • Money going out: Expenses
    • Close an Independent Collective
  • Contributing
    • Design
      • Design Workflow
      • Design Contribution Guidelines
    • Development
      • Contribution Guide
      • Best Practice Guidelines
      • Bounties
      • Architecture
      • API
        • Members
        • Collectives
        • Events
      • README Integration
      • PayPal
      • TransferWise
      • Post-Donation Redirect
      • Manual Reporting
      • GitHub Permissions
      • Internationalization (i18n) system
      • Testing with Cypress
      • Testing features
        • Conversations
      • Collective's locations
      • Virtual Cards
    • Documentation
      • Resources for documentarians
      • Style guide
      • Suggesting changes
    • Translation
  • Developers
    • OAuth
    • Personal Tokens
Powered by GitBook

Helpful Links

  • Website
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Slack

â’¸ Open Collective 2024

On this page
  • What can I do with an Open Collective?
  • What is Open Collective good for?
  • Why should I use Open Collective?
  • What do Collectives spend money on?
  • How do I pay people?
  • How much does it cost?
  • How can I pause or stop accepting contributions?

Was this helpful?

Edit on GitHub
Export as PDF
  1. Collectives

Collectives FAQ

PreviousActivity LogNextCreating a Collective

Last updated 1 year ago

Was this helpful?

What can I do with an Open Collective?

  • Collect financial contributions

  • Pay bills and reimburse expenses

  • Provide automatic budget transparency

  • Transact without incorporating your own legal entity

What is Open Collective good for?

Open Collective is great for all kinds of collaborative groups, like meetups, open-source projects, neighbourhood associations, clubs, unions, movements, conferences, non-profits, grant recipients, and incubators.

You shouldn't have to incorporate a legal entity, start a new bank account, and do bookkeeping just to collect and spend money for a project—and with Open Collective you don't have to.

Why should I use Open Collective?

Open Collective makes it easy to be transparent about your finances. We help you collect recurring or one-off contributions from sponsors, supporters, or members.

is simple: the person to be paid submits a receipt or invoice, you approve it, and they get paid. We believe that financial transparency creates stronger collaboration, so everyone can see how money flows in and out of your Collective.

What do Collectives spend money on?

There are as many answers to this question as there are Collectives! It's up to each community to decide how to spend their funds.

Some communities delegate financial decision-making to a specific person or role, some develop policies about what should be funded, and others have processes to make spending decisions together as a group.

Some common expenses are hosting costs, documentation, community moderation, printing t-shirts and stickers, conference travel expenses, food at meetups, time spent working on specific features, or even paying someone to work on a project full time!

How do I pay people?

Expenses are visible publicly, so everyone can see how much money was spent and on what (though private details like emails, names, and addresses are only visible to that user and the admins).

How much does it cost?

How can I pause or stop accepting contributions?

Remove all tiers and turn off flexible contributions.

For ideas and examples, check out this article: .

For more details about how to spend money, see our documentation about .

Money contributed to a Collective goes to the bank account of the . When someone wants to be paid, they through your Collective page. After you approve it, the person is reimbursed via PayPal.

See details about and .

Spending from your Open Collective
Has Your Open Source Community Raised Money? Here’s How to Spend It
expenses
Fiscal Host
submit an expense
Fiscal Hosts
pricing