How to Donate

Learn more about how you or your company can donate to open source projects via Open Source Collective

OSC's involvement in the contribution process

As a fiscal host, we manage and process financial contributions to the projects we host. Here's how that works:

1. We receive and hold the funds

Contributions are made to OSC on behalf of the project, rather than directly to the project itself. As the fiscal host, we ensure compliance, oversight, and proper fund management.

Please note: All transactions processed in U.S. dollars (USD). If someone contributes in another currency, the amount will be converted during the transaction.

1. We allocate the funds to the project

Your contributions are designated to the project's balance on the Open Collective platform.

• If you make a contribution via the Open Collective platform (the quickest and easiest way), your contribution will be immediately credited to the project's balance.

• If you make a contribution via an invoice (which sometimes accounting teams prefer), once we receives the funds, we manually credit the project's balance.

1. We provide transparency and reporting

Every contribution is publicly logged on Open Collective's transparent platform, making it easy for the project, donors, and the public to see where funds come from (unless they're anonymous) and how they are used.

---

Understanding the Types of Funds We Handle

Not all contributions are the same. Learn more about the different types of funds we handle, including donations and contract-based payments, each with different ways they're handled.

👉Learn more about the types of funds we accept here.

---

Ways to Financially Contribute

• Credit Card
• PayPal
• Bank Transfer
• Invoices (for orgs)
• Procurement systems & purchase orders (for orgs)
• Funds (for orgs)
• Cryptocurrency (via Drips)
• GitHub Sponsors
• Polar

---

Credit Card and PayPal

Contributing through credit card or PayPal is the quickest and easiest way to support a project hosted by Open Source Collective.

How It Works:

1. Visit the project's profile page on Open Collective

2. Click 'contribute' and select a one-time or recurring donation option

3. Choose your preferred payment method: PayPal or credit card

4. Complete the payment. Your payment will be instantly credited to the project's balance.

👉 You can read more about the overview and see the contribution flow here.

---

Bank Transfer

All transactions should be set up on Open Collective whenever possible. If someone makes a contribution and selects 'bank transfer' as the payment method, they will automatically receive these details. However, if you need our banking info, please contact us directly at [e-mail].

If you choose to donate via bank transfer (ACH or wire transfer), the process is straightforward but requires a few extra steps to ensure your contribution is properly recorded.

How It Works:

1. Visit the project's profile page on Open Collective

2. Click 'contribute' and select a one-time or recurring donation option

3. Choose your preferred payment method: bank transfer

4. You will receive detailed bank transfer instructions, both on-screen and via email, including a unique reference ID code.

5. Include the reference ID in your transfer details — this is essential for matching your transaction to the correct project.

6. Once the funds have been received and processed, they will be credited to the project's balance

Important Notes About Bank Transfer

• Processing time — bank transfers take longer to process than credit card or PayPal contributions. It may take 3-5+ business days for funds to clear and be allocated to the project.

• Receipt from your bank — If your bank allows, once you initiate the transfer, please send us an email notification to help speed up the processing. This will help us match the contribution.

---

Invoices (for orgs)

For organizations, companies, and institutions that require an invoice before making a financial contribution, OSC offers invoice-based contributions. This open is typically available for contributions over $1,000 USD.

How It Works:

1. Request an invoice — If your organization cannot donate directly through a project's Open Collective page, contact us at [e-mail] with the following details:

   1. Link to the project's Open Collective

   2. Your organization's name and contact email

   3. Preferred invoice date (if it should be issued in the future)

   4. Description of the contribution

   5. Contribution amount (USD)

   6. Purchase Order (PO) number (if applicable)

   7. Any additional instructions

Unless otherwise agreed upon, the standard payment terms we use are 30 days.

1. Payment and allocation — once the invoice is paid, funds typically take a few days to clear. After we confirm receipt, the contribution is credited to the project's balance on Open Collective under your organization's name.

Fees:

• OSC charges a fixed 10% host fee on all incoming contributions.


• If you would like to cover the 10% host fee instead of deducting it from the total contribution, use our guide here to adjust your or invoice accordingly. For assistance, contact us at [e-mail].

👉 Read more about our fees.

---

Procurement systems & purchase orders (for orgs)

If your organization requires vendors to be registered in their procurement system before making payments, OSC may already be registered on your system. If we're not, we can register as a provider in your vendor portal to facilitate financial contributions.

How it Works

1. If we aren't already, OSC can register as a provider in your company's procurement system, including signing any necessary agreements. We can also provide template agreements or work with legal teams to review existing ones.

2. Your procurement team generates a Purchase Order (PO), if required

3. OSC issues an invoice to your organization

4. Once the invoice is paid and funds are received, OSC allocates the funds, as agreed

Companies We Are Already Registered With

We are already a registered vendor for many major companies in major procurement systems. Some of the companies we are already registered with include:

• Microsoft

• Google

• Amazon

• Meta

• Salesforce

• Adobe

• Stripe

• Samsung

• Spotify

• Airbnb

• Shopify

• Etsy

• Indeed

• Coinbase

• Cloudflare

• O'Reilly Media

If your company is not listed above, please contact us and we'll complete the registration process for your procurement portal.

Fees

• OSC charges a fixed 10% host fee on all incoming contributions.

• If you would like to cover the 10% host fee instead of deducting it from the total contribution, use our guide here to adjust your Purchase Order accordingly. For assistance, contact us at [e-mail].

👉 Read more about our fees.

---

Funds (for orgs)

What is a Fund?

A Fund is a dedicated profile under OSC designed to streamline financial support for multiple open source projects. Companies and organizations often create funds to manage their contributions more efficiently, while some Funds are centered around specific topics or initiatives.

Here are some examples of current funds that we host:

• The General Google Open Source Fund
• The Airbnb Fund
• The Indeed Open Source Fund
• The Meta Open Source Fund

Why should I create a Fund?

If your organization has multiple funding programs, you want a strong identity for your funding program, or you want to simplify the invoicing process around funding open source projects - Funds are for you.

• Simplify invoicing

Instead of managing multiple invoices/POs for donations across various projects, you can consolidate everything into a single invoice. The balance remains in your Fund, ready to be distributed as needed.

• Flexible fund management

  • You control when and how to distribute funds, while we handle the payments, accounting, and legal compliance

  • Funds can also be used to support projects not hosted on the Open Collective platform by inviting third parities to submit an expense through your Fund.

How to Create a Fund

If your company is interested in setting up a Fund, please reach out to us at [e-mail].

Contributing To An Open Source Project As a Fund

Funds administrators can select their Fund as the payment source when making a contribution to projects on Open Collective. Simply choose the Fund during the "contribute as" step.

👉 Read more about contributing to projects.

Paying Requesters via Expenses by Fund

Individuals and projects can also request payments directly from a Fund.

• Requesters provide receipts or invoices

• Fund administrators review and approve expenses.

👉 Read more about expenses and invoices.

Grants Features

Funds come with some lightweight 'grantmaking' capabilities:

• Projects and individuals can submit grant requests directly from the Fund's profile page.

• Requests include a description of activities and any required documentation for review.

• Fund administrators review and approve grants.

Fees

Open Source Collective charges a fixed 10% fee on all contributions received into the platform and into a Fund.

• For Funds, this 10% fee is applied when money is deposited into the Fund.

• Contributions from a Fund to a hosted OSC member project do not incur any additional fees.

• If you are adding money to your Fund via invoice and prefer to cover the 10% host fee instead of deducting it from the total contribution, use our guide here to adjust your invoice accordingly. For assistance, contact us at [e-mail].

👉 Read more about our fees.

---

GitHub Sponsors

GitHub and Open Collective work together to ensure that projects registered with GitHub Sponsors and use Open Collective for fund management receive their funds seamlessly.

If a project is registered on GitHub Sponsors and uses Open Collective, funds can be automatically transferred on a monthly basis — no extra steps needed.

Simply sponsor the project on GitHub, and we'll do the rest. Please see this page for additional information.

---

Cryptocurrency

As of May 2023, automated cryptocurrency donations are disabled due to compliance issues related to receiving funds from a sanctioned country. Read the full announcement here.

We now accept cryptocurrency donations on a case-by-case basis and only in partnership with Drips. If you're interested in donating cryptocurrency to one of our hosted projects, please see this page.

---

Polar.sh

As a hosted member project, OSC can receive funds from Polar.sh and allocate them directly to your Open Collective account.

If your project is fiscally hosted by us and your project has a Polar account, you can follow Polar's guide to setup payouts to your Open Collective profile. Please see this page for additional information.

---

Tax Deductibility

OSC is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit. Contributions made to OSC are not tax-deductible.

---

Payment Security

Neither OSC nor the Open Collective platform store any credit card information, as Stripe and PayPal is used to handle the payments via the platform. You can learn more about Open Collective's payment security here.

Suspicious activity monitoring

If we detect any unusual donation activity, we may:

• Freeze contributions to the project and suspend expenses.

• Investigate all donations and return any flagged or disputed charges.

• Follow up with the project admins to implement additional security checks on donations and expenses until the percentage of fraudulent charges decreases.

---

How Do I Cancel Recurring Donations?

See instructions on how to cancel recurring or ongoing donations, subscriptions, payments, etc., here.