Open Collective
Open Collective
Role
Transparent fund accounting rail on the family-wide /support
page. The point isn't competitive fees (it's mid-range at ~5% for
non-OSS hosts) — it's that every donation and every expense is
public. For visitors who want their support to be auditable
("where did that ₹500 actually go?"), Open Collective is the only
rail in the family stack that answers that question by design.
Free tier
- Free when joining one of the OSS-aligned fiscal hosts (Open Source Collective 501(c)(6) for US-tax-deductible donations, Open Collective Europe for EU, Open Collective NZ, etc.)
- ~5% platform fee for non-OSS fiscal hosts
- Payment-processor fees on top (Stripe ~2.9% + 30¢, paid by donor)
- Public ledger — every donation, every expense, every reimbursement
visible at
opencollective.com/<slug> - Recurring + one-off donations
- Expense submission + approval workflow built in (collective members submit; admins approve; OC issues payouts)
Card / subscription required?
NO. Free-tier sign-up is email + collective application to a fiscal host. No payment method requested from us.
Methods exposed to the donor
Card (Stripe), Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH (US), bank transfer (EU SEPA via OC Europe), PayPal, gift cards. Donor optionally publishes their name on the public ledger or stays anonymous.
Why "transparent" matters in the family stack
Open Collective is the only rail that publishes a verifiable
where-the-money-goes trail. If the family's /support page ever
needs to credibly say "your contribution funded the Cloudflare
domain renewal" or "your contribution covered the GitHub Pages
storage costs", the OC ledger backs that claim with a public expense
record. The other donation rails (Ko-fi, BMC, Sponsors) deposit
funds into a personal account with no public accounting — same
person, same outcome, no audit trail.
Where it sits on /support
In the donations grid alongside GitHub Sponsors, Ko-fi, Buy Me a Coffee, and Liberapay. Tagged "transparent ledger" so trust-sensitive donors self-route here.
Alternatives
- GitHub Sponsors — 0% platform, dev-targeted
- Ko-fi — 0% platform, broader UX
- Buy Me a Coffee — 5% platform, similar UX
- Liberapay — 0% platform, recurring-only
- Polar.sh — OSS-friendly checkout with MoR
Swap cost
Low — single button on /support; deep-link is
https://opencollective.com/<slug>/donate. The collective itself is
the fiscal-host's record, not ours; if we ever close the collective
we point the URL at one of the other donation rails.
Why this is our pick
- Transparency by default — covers the "where does the money go?" trust gap none of the other rails address
- Free for OSS via the Open Source Collective fiscal host (no card required, no monthly platform fee)
- 501(c)(6) tax receipts for US donors via OSC — the only rail in the family stack that issues US-tax-deductible receipts
- Mature (founded 2015) and well-funded; low operational risk
- Coexists cleanly with the other donation rails — no overlap on audience or motivation
Quirks worth knowing
- Open Collective requires a collective application to a fiscal host before it goes live; not instant.
- The public ledger is a feature, not a bug — donors who want privacy use a different rail (Liberapay or BMC).
- Expense submissions require receipts attached, which adds bookkeeping discipline that the other rails don't enforce.