Explore Open Collective

Options

There are two main ways to use Open Collective:

• If you already are incorporated and have your own bank account, you can create a collective and use it as an accounting and fundraising tool, with the added transparency of having every transaction visible publicly. This doesn't fit our case as we are an informal group.
• Otherwise, you can use one of the fiscal hosts to basically hold your money and handle all the administrative overhead and use their account to fundraise, pay invoices or become eligible for grants, without the need for an incorporated org. This is the path for us.

Cost

In our case, the best fiscal host option is Open Collective Europe, incorporated in Belgium. There are fees when we received money through them:

• 6% fees for fundraising via the platform
• 8% for bank transfers
• 10% for grants, corporate donations, or tax-deductible donations
• 2.9% for card payments (Stripe fee)

If we round it up to say 10%, it might seem like a lot but when you think about how much time and money it would cost us to incorporate NEDA and handle our own bank account, it feels like a reasonable expense.

Especially as organisers, it would make our lives so much easier. Instead of chasing after each association each year for the booth, we could have a simple process, for example: each board decides the amount they want to contribue for NEDA for the year and makes 1 single payment. Then we can decide based on the funds available how many hours we want to spend with Lemberg on maintenance or new feature development, or what the budget for the booth is. We could also then set goals and have fundraising campaigns for specific features.

Another good feature is that we can name several administrators who have the power to handle invoices and spend the money for the collective. That is great to allow for shared workload instead of overworking one single treasurer from one association. It also means more control over that money so that if an association pulls out, we still have enough people to move on.

Application

It takes about seven business days to get an answer once we have submitted an application.

https://docs.opencollective.com/oceurope/getting-started/how-to-apply

• We need to confirm that we are non-profit and lack a legal entity
• We need at least two administrators (real names + emails)
• We need to provide an explanation of our activities and our mission statement, so that they can evaluate how our collective "furthers OCE's mission impact areas"
• We can also provide links to website/socials, location etc.
• By applying, we agree to maintain appropriate content standards (basically follow Code of Conduct)

Next steps

1. Decide if this is the right tool for us and we agree with the fees
2. Choose at least 2 (but ideally I would say more) administrators
3. Write a good mission statement
4. Apply and start raising money!

I will start the application process on Monday with Sven and Nicolas as admins, if someone else wants to join let me know. We can always add more admins later anyway so it's not a blocker at the moment.