For a sustainable and healthy open source ecosystem.

Are you part of an open source project looking to raise funds transparently, with minimal hassle? Join us!

We are a non-profit working for the common interests of those who create and use open source software.

Companies get huge value from open source. But up to now, it’s been hard to give back financially unless a project formed its own foundation. Now they don’t have to.

The Open Source Collective is a non-profit umbrella organisation providing financial and legal infrastructure for thousands of open source projects. We’re an API between the world of distributed collaboration and the world of accounting and invoices.

For Maintainers

Apply with your project →

Stay focused on your project — let us take care of all the accounting, taxes, invoices, and admin. You decide where the money gets spent, then we make it happen. Plus, your budget will be fully transparent to your community.

For Sponsors

Support projects now →

Help the open source projects you rely on thrive. Get recognition with your logo on the project’s page. Along with providing invoices, we can meet your accounting and legal requirements and engage with your vendor systems.

Case Studies

Webpack

“Our annual budget is now over $400,000. We don’t want the success we’ve had to be a unique story. So we’re doing what we can to get other maintainers excited about making their projects well-funded.”

Open Web Docs

“Open Web Docs was created to ensure the long-term health of web platform documentation on de facto standard resources like MDN Web Docs, independently of any single vendor or organization. “

Google Chrome

Google’s Chrome Web Framework and Tool Performance Fund has enabled Google to distribute over $1m to projects that support Chrome’s development and performance.

View Fund →

Babel

“Financial support through our Collective has made it possible for me to work on open source full time for over a year now. Babel, like many open source projects, is used by thousands of companies. More of them should step up.”

Samsung Next

Samsung Next disbursed grants with zero hassle, in full transparency—to teams working on decentralized, open, non-commercial projects, without existing legal entities or bank accounts. It could have been a funder’s nightmare, but Open Source Collective made it easy.

Indeed

“We’re giving our employees a voice in how we support the open source technologies that allow us to develop, protect, and maintain the digital infrastructure that supports our products.”

ZEIT

“Open Collective gives us access to a diverse talent pool that would be impossible to build internally. I think of it as having expertise on retainer. I can support a project without necessarily hiring the authors or micromanaging everything they do.”

Preact

“Until recently, you had to either create an LLC, or you had to pay for everything yourself. We have another option now. Our Open Collective operates like a semi-autonomous company, but without the bureaucracy.”

Universal Viewer

“As a typical open source project, we don’t have a paid licensing model, but we needed to raise money to catch issues falling between the cracks. Our users have a vested interest in this project being sustainable, and I have to make my own livelihood sustainable, too.“

JHipster

“Funding bounties motivates people to work on the parts of the project we want to push forward, and helps critical issues to be solved quicker. It allows us to give something back for the hard work of contributors, and I find that wonderful.”

How it works

FAQ for maintainers

Services

We make it easy for you to receive and disburse money without having to worry about accounting, invoicing, or setting up a legal entity or bank account for your project. You and other contributors can easily get reimbursed for expenses or paid for your time by submitting an invoice through your Collective.

We coordinate with sponsor companies to comply with their purchase order process and invoicing requirements. We have relationships with many large sponsors of open source and work to connect projects with supporters. We also advocate for open source sustainability, through conferences like SustainOSS and tools like BackYourStack.

Fees

Fee are 10% of incoming funds, plus payment processor fees. These cover our operating costs and support our initiatives to strengthen the open source ecosystem. We operate as an Open Collective ourselves—see our transparent budget.

Payments

We accept credit cards, via Stripe, through the platform automatically. We also support wire transfers and Paypal for one-off large donations. We can also credit income to your Collective from outside sources like Eventbrite for ticket sales or Threadless for t-shirt sales. We pay out expenses via Paypal. We can alternative payment methods for special circumstances (get in touch for details).

All Collectives in the Open Source Collective are denominated in US dollars. If you want your Collective to be in a different locality and currency, please check out Open Collective Europe, Open Collective UK, or other fiscal hosts.

Non-profit

We are a registered 501(c)(6) non-profit in the United States, meaning our income is not used for private or shareholder benefit. Our resources, such as the fees we collect, are all invested back into our mission: to promote a sustainable and healthy open source ecosystem. Donations to Collectives hosted by the Open Source Collective are not tax deductible. If you are a US-based project with an explicitly charitable mission, you may wish you apply to the Open Collective Foundation.

Open Collective

Open Collective Inc makes the software platform we use to enable our services. They provide their software to many organizations like us, who each host their own communities of Collectives. Open Source Collective and Open Collective were founded by some of the same people, but they are separate entities.

Accepted projects

Criteria

Since the goal of the Open Source Collective is to support a Free and Open Source ecosystem, your project license is critically important. The list of Open Source Initiative Approved License List can serve as a gauge for valid open license criteria to the collective. Other valid licensing guidelines include the following:

We can accept any open source project, in any language, anywhere in the world. We can also accept open source related meetup groups and conferences, as well as advocacy, research, and awareness initiatives.

If you are an open source project with at least 100 stars on GitHub and at least two contributors, you will likely be immediately approved.

If you don’t fit 100 GitHub stars requirement, we will consider your application on a case by case basis, using the following criteria:

Projects who don’t have their code repo on GitHub should show equivalent traction to the 100 stars requirement, whether through GitLab stars, evidence that the project is a dependency of other open source projects, or similar social validation.
User groups should have at least 50 members and be able to demonstrate a genuine history of community activity (forum, events, publications, etc).
Your project must be directly related to open source, not proprietary technology or any other topics.
If there’s a codebase at the heart of your project, it should be under an open source license. (See above.)
Meetups or small event groups should have organized at least 2 events previously, and be able to show a history of activity online and offline. As further evidence, you agree to send photo/video documentation of your first event after joining Open Source Collective.
Conferences and larger events may require specific risk assessment by our board. No expenses will be paid in advance of sufficient funds being available in the Collective budget (e.g. hiring a venue).
You understand that all agreements between your Collective and third parties, such as venues, contractors, speakers, etc, require explicit written permission and involvement of the OSC administrators. As fiscal sponsor, such agreements are legally between the third party and Open Source Collective.