Once you apply to join Open Collective Foundation and receive an approval email from us, you can immediately get started with managing your Collective on Open Collective.
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Welcome!
Top 5 things to remember
1.
Contact us if you need to sign any contracts or agreements, or have any questions about services or policies.
2.
Check Official Info and Docs for all of the necessary paperwork that comes up in grant applications.
3.
Always upload receipts for your virtual card purchases within 30 days, or the card will be deactivated.
4.
Use the Updates feature to post general, mid-year, and annual updates or action alerts to your donor community. We require at least one update per year.
5.
FAQs about how to submit expenses (i.e. get paid or spend money) are here.
Open Collective
Open Collective Inc. is the platform that OCF operates on.
Open Collective has their own homepage, budget, and documentation. These docs you're currently reading are a pared down version to relay information that is specific to OCF.
OCF (Open Collective Foundation) is a charitable fiscal host who uses the Open Collective platform
Our documentation includes information for how people can contribute to your Collective: Feel free to share this Financial Contributions overview with your contributors!
Submitting Expenses
Using funds from your Collective’s budget is simple:
Invoices are used to pay people for work completed or their goods/services.
Within the invoice option, you can either upload your own invoice, or you can create one directly on the platform. You will be able to detail what the services/goods are, and can include multiple items
When someone uses invoices, they are treated as an independent contractor. If earnings exceed $600 in a year, they will be automatically issued a 1099 tax form to fill out per IRS regulations. (Reimbursements do not trigger the 1099 form). More info about taxes here.
2.
or a Reimbursementfor purchases made on behalf of the Collective.
Reimbursements are used to pay people (often volunteers) back when they have made purchases for the group - in these cases, receipts are required so that we can ensure the requested amount matches the purchased amount in order to approve the reimbursement.
Individuals and organizations can request payment from an Collective by submitting an expense.
This is a great option for those admins who know already know exactly how much they want to pay/reimburse someone, and just want to invite them to the platform.
Sometimes a third type of expense, "Request a Grant" will appear on an Collective's page. This is because that Collective has submitted a grant proposal in order to be able to offer grants. More info here.
OCF uses a Double-Approval Process to pay out expenses: