Tools

The goal of this section is to give you an overview of different tools that you can use to manage your finance working group

Google Spreadsheet

Probably the most versatile tool out there. Perfect to get started and much better than Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to share publicly and work together on it.

We made a template that you can easily copy and adapt to your own needs to keep track of the money in and out.

Exemples:

• XR Tower and Hamlets expenses

Open Collective

It's a tool to collect and disburse money for your local group in a transparent way. It offers a simple way to upload expenses with a picture of the receipt or invoice and a simple approval process.

XR chapters using Open Collective:

• Belgium:

  • XR Belgium

  • XR Antwerp

  • XR Namur

• UK:

  • XR Hackney

  • XR Waltham Forest

• Spain:

  • XR Barcelona

Cost

If you already have a bank account, you can use Open Collective for free. There is just a 5% commission if you decide to accept donations by credit card (on top of the Stripe fees). For donations made by bank transfer, there is no commission. You just need to record them on the platform manually.

If you don’t have a bank account, rebels from Belgium have started a non profit entity "All For Climate ASBL" that can act as a fiscal host for free (in the eurozone). Go here to apply to create a collective hosted on that non profit: https://opencollective.com/allforclimate/apply

Open Collective can also directly offer fiscal sponsorship in the UK, in Europe and in the US for a 10% fee on all donations. This takes care of the accounting / book keeping.

If you've already created a non profit entity in your country, you can use it to be a fiscal host for other local groups in your region (and save them the pain and the cost of creating and maintaining a legal entity).

Given that the platform is open source, you could also fork the code and install it on your own server, in which case it’s entirely free (but a lot of work).

Can I use another crowdfunding platform with open collective?

Yes. Even though Open Collective lets you directly raise money on the platform (for a 5% fee + credit card fees), you don't have to use that feature. You can use any other crowdfunding platform out there and then add the proceeds to your open collective. In that case there is no fee (well, just the fees of the crowdfunding platform that you would be using). That's what XR Hackney has been doing. They use Chuffed.org for their fundraising.

How to create an open collective for your own local group?

Just go on https://opencollective.com/create

If you need assistance, you can reach out to [e-mail]

About Open Collective

It’s an open source platform mostly used in the open source community to enable open source projects to receive and disburse money collectively and in a very transparent way.

If you have questions or feature requests, you can submit them here: https://github.com/opencollective/opencollectives/issues