Get your initiative up and running today

Fiscal Sponsorship

made easy

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What we offer

Fiscal Sponsorship
Let's work together

Fiscal Sponsorship

The Open Collective Foundation 501(c)(3) offers fiscal sponsorship as a service to help initiatives get up and running in one day. No need to create a bank account or legal entity. Our platform enables you to easily receive donations and disburse them.

Reduce Your Overhead
We manage funds for your initiative

Reduce your overhead

We take care of receiving tax deductible donations for your initiative through our registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We manage your expenses, file taxes, and take care of accounting. Let us do the admin so you can focus on your mission!

Increase capacity
Purpose-built to streamline your process

Increase capacity

We automate the back-end processes so you can spend less time doing admin. We provide a dashboard where you can see the budget we are holding for you, how much you've spent and everything you need to tell your donors how to fund you. Reporting is automatic and in real time.

Ready to get started

Ready to get started?

Open Collective Foundation helps you run your initiative with minimal hassle. Grantees and project participants will love the simplicity and accessibility, and you’ll love how much your overhead is reduced.

Reach out to us! We will set up a call and help you get started

Apply to Start Apply with your initiative Read Info Guide More Info

We enable initiatives to focus on their mission

Financial Admin

Financial Admin

Many initiatives don’t have a bank account or a charity legal entity set up to receive funds. We help them by taking care of tax reporting and financial admin. We keep track of the budget, process expense claims, and handle payments. Easily add multiple grants from different sources into one budget.

Pay Expenses

Pay your expenses

Anyone in your initiative can submit expenses. Once approved by you, we process them for payment via bank transfer or PayPal. A dashboard allows you to easily view, approve, and request payment expenses all in one place.

Tax deductible

Tax deductible donations

Allow your supporters to make tax deductible donations via credit card, bank transfer, or PayPal. As part of many Donor Advised Funds (DAFs), donations through them are easy! We can provide the invoices and documentation your funders need.

Community features

Plus great community engagement features

Join our network of hosted initiatives and be a part of a supportive and growing open-source community.

Our Fees

In order to support you better, we use the Open Collective Platform to manage your initiative.

Fiscal Sponsorship Fees

5 %
Crowdfunding On each incoming donation made via the Open Collective Platform
4-8 %
Bank Transfer or Check **Based on amount raised

*Third-party payment processors (like Stripe and Paypal) charge separate fees on each transaction made using their service. Learn more here.

**8% Up to 500k raised. - 6% Up to 1 Million raised. - 4% Over a Million raised

Initiatives

These donors and initiatives are trusting us

Our Fiscally Sponsored Projects have received funding through Open Collective Foundation from these entities.

General Information and Terms of Fiscal Sponsorship

What is your mission?

a. Increasing access to educational resources and training: With the advance of technology and the movement towards a society where people work together to enhance and develop the future, there has been an increase in the number of organizations and groups that are coming together to promote education.
b. Creating a positive social impact: Sponsor’s social impact purpose is aimed at finding ways to (i) eliminate prejudice and discrimination; (ii) combat community deterioration; (iii) decrease juvenile delinquency; (iv) serve the less fortunate or distressed; (v) serve to prevent animal or child cruelty; or (vi) create a positive impact on society.
c. Developing tools to improve civic participation within cities or communities: Sponsor supports projects aimed at fostering civic participation, democratic debate and rebuilding community ties and strengths.

What is Fiscal Sponsorship?

A Fiscal Sponsor/Host is a non-profit organization that legally offers their tax-exempt status to groups or projects that align with the mission of that host/sponsor. More info here.

Why choose to be fiscally sponsored/Who needs a fiscal host?
    Fiscal hosting is a great option for:
  • ongoing projects that want to raise funds over a long-term period,
  • newly formed grassroots groups who want to quickly accept tax-deductible donations without going through the process of becoming a 501(c)(3) through the IRS (a process that can take months/years),
  • initiatives who want to better organize their fundraising efforts, spending, and expenses in a transparent way.
    • There are many reasons a group might want to be fiscally sponsored! Read more about it in our FAQs or feel free to reach out to us with any questions or to schedule a time to chat.
How it works:
  1. Donations are made to our 501(c)(3)
    2. • A dashboard for you to manage your initiative.
  2. We make a “grant” to your group/project
  3. We send donors their receipts, disburse funds/reimburse expenses after your approval, send out tax forms to independent contractors as applicable
  4. You have complete access to collect, spend, manage your money on our platform
    5. More info here
Tax-exempt 501(c)(3) public charity nonprofit status
  • Your initiative will gain increased credibility to donors
  • You will have special access to grant opportunities - wider range of funding opportunities
  • Donations to your initiative are tax-deductible
  • Groups hosted by us are aligned with our charitable mission
What we offer:

• A dashboard for you to manage your initiative.
• Administrative Support
• We act as your legal entity • Your group doesn’t need a bank account
• We are responsible for receiving and disbursing funds based on expense requests (after your admin approval)
• Maintain tax-exempt status for your fund
• Receiving bulk payments
• Tax form management
• Checkout processes from other revenue streams (i.e….)
• InvoicingInternational payment processing options for receiving/disbursing funds
• CSV import/export options
• Two step approval process for disbursement
• Integrations with ActBlue
• We receive grants from Donor Advised Funds (DAFs)

Do you still have questions?

Feel free to read more about us and what do in our Documentation + FAQs, or if you would like us contact you, send us an email, and we'll be in touch with you as soon as possible.

Learn More

Contact us

Create your Initiative

Introduce your Initiative to the community

opencollective.foundation/

Write a short description of your initiative (150 characters max). This is to start the conversation to see if we are a good fit for each other.

I agree with the terms of service of Open Collective Foundation.

Great, thank you!

The pandemic hasn’t stopped.

Neither have we.

OCF is again offering fee-free* fiscal hosting to any newly formed COVID relief groups.

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Support communities with mutual aid.

Discover groups to donate to, or join with your own
*Groups must be formed after July 1, 2020. Offer of 0 fees applies from now-Dec 31, 2020.

Join Open Collective today with your COVID-relief mutual aid group. Learn more or contact us to start collecting tax-deductible donations asap.

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