The Open Collective Platform is moving to a community governed non-profit!

I am excited to announce some important changes at Open Collective and the birth of a new non-profit organization: The current Open Collective Platform is moving to a new home, the Open Finance Consortium. 

A group of fiscal hosts representing thousands of collectives have created a new independent, community-governed, non-profit organization and have reached an agreement with Open Collective Inc. to take over the Open Collective platform as it exists today. 

We want to provide a community-owned home for the platform, the team and the collectives it serves. The product will stay true to its current spirit and the fundamentals will stay the same. 

Where is this coming from? 

We have always been committed to supporting our community and the long tail of collectives that are using Open Collective to make an impact in the world. In 2022 we began exploring what an ‘exit to community’ would look like, placing the future of Open Collective in the hands of those who depend on it.

I truly believe that this is the only way to protect Open Collective’s mission so we decided to make it happen! 

The road here was bumpy 

As most of you know, earlier in the year, one of the largest hosts on the platform, Open Collective Foundation (OCF) shut down its operations. This came at the tail end of a couple of difficult post-pandemic years that had seen a lot of budgets shrink quite dramatically. This combination seriously impacted our revenue and it forced us to look at our structure, our strengths and weaknesses and ultimately how we want to serve the community that uses Open Collective. 

It was a very difficult situation, but I am so proud of the work we did to find a path forward. Open Collective Inc. and the newly formed Open Finance Consortium reached an agreement and the non-profit will take over the current version of the platform and the team, running it themselves for their members and larger community. 

The Agreement

The community doesn’t have the financial means to buy Open Collective back from the company, so we had to get creative.

In order for the non profit to start up, I am donating all my stock and options on Open Collective Inc. to it.  That stock will then be repurchased by Open Collective Inc. with the assets needed to run the platform + some seed funding for the non profit. 

Open Collective Inc. 's executive team, including François Hodierne and Ben Nickolls, are also giving up their stock options as part of this deal also and will join the board of the new non profit. This is how much we all care about our mission and the work we have done these past years!! 

Not all of Open Collective is moving to the non-profit. The brand stays in the company as do most of its cash reserves. The company will support the new non profit with some initial funding to help prevent any disruption for all our existing users. From now on, all platform fees and platform tips on the current branch are going to the non-profit managed by the community. It's on all of us to steward this version of Open Collective the best we can.

Open Collective Inc. is still working on the same mission 

After many years, and a lot of love, I am stepping down as CEO of Open Collective Inc. Xavier Damman, who initially founded the company back in 2015, is coming back as CEO and will start a new branch to take a different stab at the original mission of “creating a new form of organization for the Internet generation”. His experience in the past few years, building a fiscal host for climate projects (allforclimate.earth), partnering with Gitcoin to help collectives receive crypto donations, building an open source wallet (the Citizen Wallet), and participating in the creation of a community space in the center of Brussels to rebuild the commons (the Commons Hub Brussels) gave him new insights to build a new version of Open Collective to enable communities to account not only for donations, but also for other kinds of contributions.

He will blog more about his plans soon. In the meantime, you can already fill out this form if you are interested in this new branch.

What am I doing?

I believe deeply in the mission we have and will therefore join the board of the Open Finance Consortium as well as staying as an advisor to Open Collective Inc. to support Xavier in this new iteration. Aseem Sood (Open Collective cofounder) will return as a board member of Open Collective Inc.. I will take a very deserved break :D to spend time with my kiddo (who’s as old as Open Collective!) and after that, well… we’ll see. 

Join the community owned venture!

You can continue to be part of this community led journey as well and I very much encourage you to do so! Follow their progress and announcements here, there are several ways to get involved! And remember, all your generous tips and admin fees are now part of to the Open Finance Consortium's budget.

Last, but fundamental

This team over the years has been everything, and Open Collective would not be here without them... to them all my gratitude and admiration. (yes, Xavier & me we were once young and ,yes, that is Aseem holding my now 9 year old kiddo)

Onwards, Pia