case studies - Open Collective

case studies

Real stories of Collectives

OCF Updates We Love — Autumn/Winter 2022

OCF Updates We Love — Autumn/Winter 2022

Welcome in the new year with these inspirational updates from initiatives hosted by Open Collective Foundation!

The Era of Mastodon

The Era of Mastodon

How communities are decentralizing social networking, no billionaires required. With the mass exodus of Twitter users following Elon Musk’s takeover, alternative platforms are gaining popularity among these ‘digital refugees’. The leading choice for many is Mastodon, free and open-source self-hosted social networking. Why is it growing so fast, and

Navigating Failure with the Crowd as your Compass

Navigating Failure with the Crowd as your Compass

Perhaps you are in some way failing to meet the mission of your collective whether that is building capacity, raising funds, transitioning leadership, or anything else. Whatever you do to address that momentary failure, do not fail alone.

Kia Kotahi Ako: Collaborating for Impact

Kia Kotahi Ako: Collaborating for Impact

Established in 2021, Kia Kotahi Ako (Learning As One) is activating education initiatives in Aoteroa New Zealand, to have the biggest impact for Papatūānuku (mother earth). Motivated by the climate crisis and an inequitable education system, Kia Kotahi Ako is an ambitious collaboration to tackle these challenges together. Edmund Hillary

Sustainable Progress and Equality Collective: SPEC

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. Joe connected

Homeschooling with Modulo

Homeschooling with Modulo

Reinventing education, Empowering Parents, Inspiring Kids Manisha Snoyer is a passionate teacher with 15 years of experience with kids of different talents, psychological types, and walks of life. This "teacherpreneur” founded Modulo—a tool that accelerates learning through individualized instruction and a flexible school schedule. Manisha debunks myths about

PHP Foundation: Alive and Kicking

PHP Foundation: Alive and Kicking

PHP Foundation co-founder Roman Pronskiy on the state of the language, and why its future is bright. Born and raised in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Roman Pronsky has always worked in the tech industry. He started by studying math, and later programming organically fit in. After 10 years working as a software

OCF Updates We Love — Summer 2022

OCF Updates We Love — Summer 2022

Check out these inspirational updates from initiatives hosted by Open Collective Foundation - Summer 2022 Edition

The Week: A New Playbook for Climate Mobilization

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

Open-source intelligence for investigating war crimes

Open-source intelligence for investigating war crimes

Emmi Bevensee is a data scientist and researcher of complexity, hate, the far-right, and disinformation, originally from the US and now based in NZ. They created Social Media Analysis Toolkit (SMAT) to facilitate activists, journalists, researchers, and other social good organizations to analyze and visualize misinformation, disinformation, and harmful online

Fundraise Fast with No Borders: Stories of Support for Ukraine

Fundraise Fast with No Borders: Stories of Support for Ukraine

Disaster fundraising calls for immediate action, with no time to set up a nonprofit or do paperwork. Open Collective helps passionate activists in situations that require quick responses. Whether a natural disaster or a war crisis, communities need accessible and transparent tools for efficient cooperation, especially when it comes to

Проект 1К: допомога Україні «Peer-to-Peer» («Рівний-рівному»)

Проект 1К: допомога Україні «Peer-to-Peer» («Рівний-рівному»)

Проект 1K зібрав [https://www.1kproject.org/] 5,4 мільйона доларів на безпосередню допомогу понад 5000 родинам, які постраждали від війни. Ми провели щиру розмову з українсько-американським засновником проєкту Алексом Іскольдом. Алекс Іскольд – один із тих, хто живе в стилі «американська мрія». Зараз він працює в Нью-Йорку; та народився Алекс

1K Project: Peer-to-peer help for Ukraine

1K Project: Peer-to-peer help for Ukraine

1K Project [http://1kproject.org] has raised $5.4 million for direct relief to 5,000+ families affected by the war. In this heartfelt conversation, we speak with Ukrainian-American founder Alex Iskold. Alex Iskold is living the American dream. Now in New York, he was born in the Ukrainian city

Tauiwi Tautoko: Countering Racism with Listening

Tauiwi Tautoko: Countering Racism with Listening

A kiwi course teaching evidence-backed techniques to detox our discourse Do you think that arguing with racists on the internet is like screaming into the void, but not speaking up also seems wrong? Do you wish you could engage with racist family members or acquaintances without either screaming or biting

Igalia's Open Prioritization Project: Advancing the Web Commons for All

Igalia's Open Prioritization Project: Advancing the Web Commons for All

The goal is nothing less than the democratization of the web’s future At Igalia [https://igalia.com], we believe very strongly in the open web and its advancement. One of the barriers we see to moving forward is that adding new features to web browsers has always been dependent

Govern your Collective with Metagov Gateway

Govern your Collective with Metagov Gateway

The Metagov Gateway helps communities govern themselves by connecting decision-making tools and governance services to platforms where decisions need to be made. Over the past couple months, we’ve been working with Open Collective communities who are using the Gateway to improve their governance. One Open Collective community, Bhumisparsha, was

Improving Equity in Sustainable Access to Medical Treatments

Improving Equity in Sustainable Access to Medical Treatments

Identifing solutions to key barriers in different global contexts and across sectors.

Ersilia: How Open Collective is Redefining Open Organizations

Ersilia: How Open Collective is Redefining Open Organizations

> Ersilia [https://www.ersilia.io/] is a nonprofit organisation that supports research against infectious and neglected diseases. Our goal is to facilitate adoption of artificial intelligence tools to accelerate the development of new medicines. We focus on establishing collaborations in low-resourced settings where the costs of drug discovery are

Pionir Free School Students outside in Serbia

“Free Schools Are the Future of Education”

An interview with Marko Kazic, creator of Pionir Free School in Serbia which serves as a replicable model towards building an exponential culture.

What happens when you donate to Morevna Project?

What happens when you donate to Morevna Project?

Transparently trace a $500 contribution through Open Collective The mission of Morevna Project [https://opencollective.com/morevnaproject] is to develop, improve and popularize open-source technologies for animation. While all money flows are transparent on Open Collective, it's interesting to trace and explain the path it takes in a

Helping Open-Source Contributors Escape Afghanistan

Helping Open-Source Contributors Escape Afghanistan

How the community came together to help families escape a war zone. The Persian proverb یکی برای همه و همه برای یکی means "Every one should sacrifice for the community, and the community should come together for the one" . This has been exemplified over the last month, as

New mother comfortable with her post pregnancy body by Jacob Lund Photography from NounProject.com

case studies Featured

When Open Collective Met Okionu

Jacquelyn Clemmons of Okionu Birth Foundation wants to to normalize complete and holistic postpartum care through by supporting both parents with nourishing meals following the birth of a child.

New funding for the Net’s oldest discussion network

New funding for the Net’s oldest discussion network

The Usenet Big-8 Management Board has joined Open Collective Decades before Facebook and Twitter, Usenet was the Internet’s main platform for announcements, discussions, and chat. The venerable communication network remains active thanks to worldwide volunteers. Online discourse today is dominated by commercial social media platforms that gather and exploit

Making funding happen for Happen Films

Making funding happen for Happen Films

Using the medium of movies to showcase inspiring solutions to the wicked problems of our times. Happen Films [https://happenfilms.com/] believes the solutions are out there, and that people are already pioneering the transition we need in society. They find and share these stories to inspire others to make