Third-Party Fundraising Tools and Benefits
Although receiving funds through the Open Collective platform is the swiftest, most direct & efficient way to receive funds, OCF’s hosted initiatives can also use some third-party tools to receive funds for their initiative.
Please be sure to review our Outside Entities Policy and Outside Accounts Policy before moving forward with any of these options
Note:
You must reach out to us if you decide to use one of these third-party platforms. We may already have an account on the platform, in which case we will help you get things set up. It will also speed up the process of getting the funds into your budget.
Since you are part of Open Collective Foundation, funds will need to go directly to us and then we’ll make sure they go into your initiative’s budget.
Since moving funds from these sites into your balance is a manual process, and due to external platforms’ own unique disbursement processes, the funds will not reach you as quickly as those raised through Open Collective. There will likely be delays.
OCF will charge our standard fee on funds raised on the external sites.
The below tools have been used by Open Collective Foundation's initiatives in the past and send us information about which initiative the funds are for.
💡 Use our EIN (81-4004928) when registering in order for your initiative's collected donations to be grouped in OCF’s umbrella.
Let us know if you would like to register with Benevity, and we will get your initiative signed up under our host's umbrella
Benefits include:
Fund-matching opportunities
many companies use it as their giving portal
Access to donors
Initiative becomes searchable on Benevity's website
Reporting to OCF for streamlined disbursement of funds back into account
Credits are made into your initiative's budget 1x/month
Onboarding Info:
Note: funds raised from Benevity are disbursed to us on a monthly basis.
The following are not set up to work specifically with fiscally hosted projects and do not report where donated funds are meant to be allocated to.
If you wish to have the raised funds from the below platforms allocated to your fund, you must inform us about the incoming funds (please include links + screenshots). Unclaimed funds will be directed to OCF's operating costs.
Use this link to setup a Facebook Fundraiser with Open Collective as the recipient
Contact us when you start a new fundraiser so that we can get the raised funds correctly allocated to your account
❗ Due to Facebook's disbursement schedule, there could be a ~1 month delay in disbursement of raised funds to your initiative after the Facebook fundraiser has ended. Funds arrive from Facebook in batches, so it is unlikely OCF received your fundraising campaign's money all at once.
OCF's Amazon Smile link!
Shop at smile.amazon.com and they'll donate 0.5% of the price of eligible purchases to our charitable organization, at no extra cost to you.
GoFundMe Charity Fundraising
Select OpenCollective Foundation as the beneficiary in order for your donors to receive tax-deductible status [recommended],
or you collect them on your own behalf, and transfer them to your initiative as one lump sum. [it will not be tax-deductible for your donors]
If you use any of these tools, please email us. Also, let us know if you are interested in a platform not listed above and we will see if we can make it work.
Please email us if you are expecting a payment from the third party service so we can look out for it and credit your account.
Since initiatives can receive and spend funds via PayPal from within the Open Collective platform, you should not set up an external PayPal account for receiving or spending funds.
Through OCF’s 501(c)(3) status, our initiatives are eligible for a variety of nonprofit rates and benefits. Don’t forget to inquire to vendors and venues about a possible discount!
Keep in mind that nonprofit rates are not a legal process. It's up to the vendor's discretion whether or not they offer initiatives a nonprofit rate.
Unfortunately, Techsoup is not compatible with fiscal hosting.
Slack officially offers a nonprofit discount through TechSoup, but there may be a possibility, however, of receiving a nonprofit rate directly from Slack. We reached out to them directly and they indicated that our hosted groups can apply for nonprofit rates directly. Please let us know if it works!
Reach out to us is you would like to create a Google for Nonprofits or Google Workspace (a.k.a. G Suite) account for your initiative.
