For Projects

Are you developing or maintaining an open source project or community? If so, you're familiar with the challenges of managing both the technical and operational aspects of your project.

Stay in control of your project and spend less time on behind-the-scenes tasks, like accounting and contracts.

Check out our eligibility requirements for becoming a fiscally hosted project by us here.

Apply Today

How you benefit

We know the hard work and dedication it takes to maintain an open source project.

Open Source Collective is here to support your passion for development by taking on the essential yet time-consuming tasks of managing your project's finances, overseeing legal and accounting responsibilities, to help strengthen your project's overall structure.

As your fiscal sponsor, we help you focus on collaboration and development by handling the behind-the-scenes operations.

Our Services

Open Source Collective offers the following services:

Hold your money using transparent budgets updated in real-time

Make it easy for funders and institutions to donate to your project

Allow you to accept contributions via credit card, PayPal, bank transfer and more

Create reports you can use to track your financial progress

Pay your maintainers, vendors, and other expenses through the Open Collective platform via bank transfer, PayPal, or virtual cards

Hold your domains, trademarks or other IP for your project

Offer full-time or part-time employment with access to benefits through an EOR

Sign legal agreements on your behalf

Empower your project’s growth by offering grants to attend conferences, community calls, speaker events, and networking opportunities

and more

What it Costs

Our mission is to benefit the open source community. We deliver all this for a fee of 10% of your incoming funds. This 10% covers all our operational costs, including the services mentioned above. No hidden fees. Collectives cover third party payment processor fees attributed to expenses.

How does it work?

Open Source Collective provides a service called Fiscal Sponsoring or Fiscal Hosting, which means we act as an umbrella for your project, giving it legal status and use of our bank account. Read more about what Fiscal Hosting is here. As a Fiscal Host, we must review, and likely sign, all agreements on behalf of the collectives we host.*

As a fiscal host, we use a platform called Open Collective to deliver fundraising functionality, paying expenses, and transparent budgets. Through Open Collective, you can track your incomings and outgoings, and connect and back other vital projects worldwide.

Find out more about Open Collective

* As your host, any formal agreements with third parties will need to be signed off in writing by Open Source Collective admins

Am I eligible?

We can accept most open source projects, in any language, anywhere in the world - as well as meetup groups, conferences, and advocacy and awareness initiatives, as long as they relate to the open source ecosystem.

For the most recent eligibility criteria, see here.

Open Source Collective’s focus is on supporting open source collectives. We don’t host individuals who are working across a multitude of projects. If this is you, we recommend looking into GitHub Sponsors.

Read the fine print