Is OSC right for me?

How to see whether you should apply for OSC fiscal hosting or not.

Open Source Collective (OSC) offloads operational and administrative tasks necessary to run an open source project.

Joining OSC is great for projects that have reached their limit for administrative workload, but for projects that have little to no admin, fiscal hosting may feel like it is adding additional administration where there was none.

Joining OSC is a good option if:

• You have multiple contributors or maintainers who can help manage administrative duties like approving expenses.

• You need to pay out project funds to multiple people on a semi-regular basis.

• You want your financial transactions to be transparent.

• You need help with things like offering employment contracts, and health insurance to your contributors.

• You need help writing contracts, collecting incoming funds from vendors, or managing vendor procurement systems.

• You don't want to hold the project's funds in a personal or company bank account.

• You have contributors in different countries who need funds.

• You do not want to take responsibility for your Collective's accounting, taxes, liability, payments, and financial admin.

If the above sounds like you, you should consider applying at https://opencollective.com/opensource/apply.

Joining OSC may not be a good option if:

• You are the only person who can manage or whom you trust to handle the administration and finances of your project.

• You only ever need to pay out one person (yourself included).

• You don't expect your project to eventually bring in more than $600 of donations annually.

• Your project does not use an open license.

• You're not interested in building a community that will eventually take over ownership of the project.

• You want to hold your money in a currency that is not USD. OSC only holds funds in USD.

Every project has unique needs, and if a fiscal hosting relationship feels overwhelming, we recommend exploring fundraising platforms that prioritize individual attention, such as:

• https://github.com/sponsors
• https://en.liberapay.com/
• https://ko-fi.com/
• https://www.patreon.com/

You can see a side-by-side comparison of these platforms and ours to compare pricing and feature options here: https://docs.opencollective.com/help/product/comparison

Use Open Collective as an Independent Collective

You don't need to be part of a fiscal host to benefit from the platform and its functionality. If your organization or project already exists as an LLC or a nonprofit, you can use the platform as an Independent Collective.

More about that here: https://docs.opencollective.com/help/independent-collectives/about-independent-collectives