Funds
Funds are an easy way to give money to multiple open source projects.
A Fund is a specific type of profile created under OSC for the purpose of moving money frictionlessly to multiple open source projects. Some Funds are created on behalf of a particular company while others are focused on a topic.
Here are examples:
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.
Instead of managing multiple invoices/POs for donations to multiple projects or even to one project over multiple months, you can request one invoice to cover all your funding needs and hold the balance in your account on Open Collective.
You decide when and how to support projects with your fund, we handle the payments, accounting, and legal processes.
You can even use the balance in your fund to contribute to projects that are not hosted on the Open Collective platform by inviting a third party to submit an expense!
Funds appear as a source for any administrator when making a one-off or recurring contribution to a project on Open Collective. Select the Fund during the 'contribute as' step:
Individuals and projects can request payments direct from a fund. Reqeustors provide receipts or invoices that are passed to Fund administrators for approval.
Funds come with some lightweight 'grantmaking' features:
Projects and individuals can request a grant directly from a Fund's profile page. We invite the requestor to provide a description of their activities and upload any supporting documentation. This information is passed to the Fund's administrators for approval.
Open Source Collective charges a fixed 10% fee on all contributions received into the platform.
For funds, this means the 10% host fee is collected when a deposit is made into the fund. This is different from a user account where the 10% fee is collected when the donation is made to the open source project and comes out of the donation amount. This fee is only collected once so donations from a fund to a collective do not incur additional fees.