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2022 in Review: Open Collective Foundation

Alanna Irving

• 6 min read
2022 in Review: Open Collective Foundation

What an incredible year 2022 was for Open Collective Foundation—an indication of the surge of energy, ideas, and resources flowing into solidarity movements. We are humbled and happy to provide a legal and financial toolbox the groups who make up these movements need to do their important and diverse work in communities.

Contributions grew nearly 3x over the previous year, to $30m+ from 55,500+ unique donors, and the number of amazing Collectives we host nearly doubled, to 461. Over $19m was paid out to over 2,500 activists, community builders, researchers, and creators who need resources to sustainably make positive change. And, to keep up with all this growth, we launched new services and programs, developed our team and board, and evolved as an organization.

2022 Leaderboard

Top Collectives by number of contributors

  • 1117: 1K Project, direct support for families affected by the war in Ukraine.
  • 697: Bushwish Ayuda Mutua, a network of neighbors supporting neighbors / una red de vecines apoyando vecines.
  • 394: South Philly Fridge, community fridges and pantries which provide access to food aid 24 hours a day.
  • 332: Club A Kitchen, mutual aid group that provides food, groceries, PPE and hygiene supplies.
  • 310: Chicago Community Jail Support, volunteer mutual aid network supporting those recently released.

Top Collectives by amount raised

  • $9.36m: 1K Project, direct support for families affected by the war in Ukraine.
  • $1.81m: OpenMined, an open-source community making the world more privacy-preserving by lowering the barrier-to-entry to private AI technologies.
  • $1m: Data Empowerment Fund, grants to data infrastructure prototypes (data trusts, cooperatives, exchanges).
  • $943k: Digital Infrastructure Grants, research grants for the study of digital infrastructure maintenance.
  • $931k: art.coop, growing the Solidarity Economy movement by centering systems-change work led by working class, queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, People of Color (QTBIPOC) artists and culture-bearers.

Top Funders

Every single one of our Collectives, big or small, has an amazing story! Check out some of these news highlights from Collective Updates, and case studies of them in action.

OCF Updates We Love — Autumn/Winter 2022
Welcome in the new year with these inspirational updates from initiatives hosted by Open Collective Foundation!
Open CollectiveOpen Collective Foundation
OCF Updates We Love — Summer 2022
Check out these inspirational updates from initiatives hosted by Open Collective Foundation - Summer 2022 Edition
Open CollectiveOpen Collective
1K Project: Peer-to-peer help for Ukraine
1K Project [http://1kproject.org] has raised $5.4 million for direct relief to5,000+ families affected by the war. In this heartfelt conversation, we speakwith Ukrainian-American founder Alex Iskold.Alex Iskold is living the American dream. Now in New York, he was born in theUkrainian city
Open CollectiveElena Rubashevska
The Week: A New Playbook for Climate Mobilization
The Week is an incredible initiative creating a new, powerful approach to effect the social change we need to affect climate change. They’re looking to hire 3 new team members. Could it be you? The reality is clear: we need mass mobilization to solve the climate crisis. Millions of people
Open CollectiveOpen Collective Foundation
Sustainable Progress and Equality Collective: SPEC
Joe Torreggiani, a software engineer and social activist, has always been concerned about making the world a better place. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, he observed the community around him more closely and moved toward action to mitigate the social unrest and tension rising in society…
Open CollectiveElena Rubashevska

We did a lot in 2022....

We developed a new Discovery Dashboard where you can explore Collectives by topic and location.

Exploring OCF Collectives in New York

We supported four artist-organizer fellows to create media about the solidarity economy with 12 months of unrestricted funding.

Imagining & Enacting the Worlds We Want: Unrestricted Support for OCF Artist-Organizers
Open Collective Foundation reflects back on a pilot program that supported four Artist-Organizer Fellows in 2022: Ebony Gustave, Niki Franco, Nia, and Robin Crane.
Open CollectiveOpen Collective

OCF's Solidarity School hosted many events, about participatory budgeting, collaborative funding, democratic decision-making, money health, the solidarity economy, and legal advice, as well as offers and needs markets, welcome parties, and community forums where Collective connect and support one another.

We welcomed native-led Collectives like Sovereign Bodies Institute and Native Roots Network, and facilitated a donation to Iron Path Farms supporting carbon-offsetting and reforestation.

Open Collective Inc. Donates $10k to Iron Path Farms
Why did Open Collective Inc. donate 10k to Iron Path Farms, a 2Spirit Haudenosaunee-led Food Sovereignty Project? We are an unconventional tech company striving to usher in a world where collectivity, transparency, and good livelihoods are the norm. We work to be an example of the world we want to
Open CollectiveOpen Collective

We now enable employment with benefits for 38 Collective workers, giving those working in unincorporated groups access to stable livelihoods usually only available to larger, formally established organizations.

We supported Open Collective to be fully translated into Spanish.

We figured out many new service offerings for our Collectives as their fiscal sponsor, like enter a commercial lease, register a trademark, give grants to their community, and receive donations in cryptocurrency.

We re-designed our website and created an animated explainer video, to better tell OCF's story and how it all works.

Collectives nominated and voted on a board member to represent them in Foundation governance, with the selected new director set to be announced soon!

As we continue to scale up and mature, OCF is on a journey evolve as a foundation in accordance with our values and our guiding principle of solidarity. In 2022, we added several new team members, evolved our board of directors, and implemented new internal processes, like the team setting their own salaries.

How the team sets its own salaries at OCF (part 1)
Distributed leadership aligns with our guiding principle of solidarity at Open Collective Foundation, and it’s an area we’ve been intentionally developing. In mid-2022, we started rethinking how we pay our core team. We asked ourselves: how might our salaries be determined equitably and collectively…
Open CollectiveAlanna Irving
Open Collective Foundation Welcomes Angie Kim and Hafidha Acuay to Board of Directors!
New York, NY, July 7, 2022 — Open Collective Foundation, a fiscal sponsor supporting the Solidarity Economy movement with a community-led technology platform — announces the election of two new members to its Board of Directors: Angie Kim and Hafidha Acuay. “We are thrilled to work with Angie Kim…
Open CollectiveOpen Collective Foundation

We can't wait to see what 2023 has in store! Follow up on social media (Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and Facebook) to find out.