Open Collective Update - May 2021
So many new features!
Projects
Want to track specific budgets within your Collective? Projects are the solution! Easily move money from your main budget to a Project, and receive contributions and expenses to it directly. To try it, scroll to that section of your page and click "Create Project".
New PayPal Options
Previously, PayPal was only for one-time contributions. Now it's available for monthly or yearly recurring payments as well! On the flip side, if a Fiscal Host doesn't want to accept PayPal, they can now disable it in their settings.
Standalone pages
You can now link directly to pages showing all your Events, Connected Collectives, or Projects (click to see examples), which are linked from the navbar as well.
Beta Test: Virtual Cards
Want to make purchases online without needing to pay yourself and then submit an expense for reimbursement? Use a card linked directly to your Open Collective balance! The beta is only open to those hosted by Open Source Collective and Open Collective Foundation for now. If you would like to try out a virtual card, let us know.
Open Collective Foundation is hiring!
Open Collective Foundation grew 20x in 2020 due to a huge influx of new groups and funding. We're seeking to add a member to its small, fully remote team. Looking for a mid-level flexible generalist in the US, who can work across different projects.
Fiscal Host Spotlight: AllForClimate
Europe-based AllForClimate is dedicated to movements for climate and social justice. They have over 100 Collectives, like Extinction Rebellion and Fridays for Future chapters, doing critical work on the global climate emergency.
News & Inspiration
👐 The recently published report Solidarity Not Charity - Grantmaking in the Solidarity Economy has great insights about funding for mutual aid and cooperative groups.
✍️ Facebook has joined Open Web Docs as a lead funder, supporting web platform documentation for the benefit of web developers & designers worldwide.
🙋 When the New York Transport Museum laid off a third of its staff, they started an Open Collective to support affected staff through mutual aid.
🤦 A long time Collective asks: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?
🤔 The Register asks a related question: When software depends on a project thanklessly maintained by a random guy in Nebraska, is open source sustainable?
👉 Nanda Munhoz of Social Change Agency, Fiscal Host for hundreds of UK community groups, is speaking at the DigiLeaders conference about how they launched and scaled pandemic response.
😋 We Got This Seattle has been chosen as the charity beneficiary of this year's annual first copper riven salmon dinner.
Tweets that make us proud
we're building governance tools at https://t.co/kTQMqOz1Oq that use the @opencollect APIs- right now it supports automating approval/rejection of expenses based on "emoji-voting" in conversations: https://t.co/XJdjjO125S
— miriam (@gigdotcom) April 29, 2021
@ABCmicrogrants helped me during a tough time in my life. The pandemic was at full force in India. I had not been receiving my fellowship for 6+ months. I had almost run out of my savings and even with help from friends (who got their fellowships sporadically too) 1/n
— RohanSarkar (@SarkarRohan1) May 12, 2021
Monthly Leaderboard
Top Financial Contributors
- Google $125,360
- UCSF Digital Health $82,914
- Permaculture Assoc. $80,286
- Ethereum Community $75,000
- Square $35,995
- Frontend Masters $16,500
- Equal Brussels $13,000
- Chrome Webpack $11,000
- Thankful for Chicago $8,076
- Airbnb $8,037
Top Collectives
by new contributors
- NYU Graduate Workers +690
- MLPS Northside +149
- Chicago Jail Support +132
Top New Collectives
by contributions
- Season of Docs $125,360
- NYU Graduate Workers $37,032
- May Day Court Fees $2,489