Hello folks, this is an impromptu emergency announcement.

In short: Open Collective Foundation, the fiscal host we use for Beehaw, will no longer accept donations starting on March 15, 2024. They will shut down completely at the end of the year, December 31, 2024. This was an extremely sudden decision by them; we were only made aware of it last night through their email to us. The cause given is “Open Collective Foundation’s business model is not sustainable with the number of complex services we have offered and the fees we pay to the Open Collective Inc. tech platform;” they note that they froze accepting new collectives last year.

This obviously presents a lot of problems for Beehaw. Here are all the relevant dates given to us by Open Collective:

  • Last day to accept funds/receive donations: March 15, 2024
  • Last day collectives can have employees: June 30, 2024
  • Last day to spend or transfer funds: September 30, 2024
  • Day they formally dissolve: December 31, 2024

Because Open Collective holds our funds, based on our understanding it seems likely we will not be able to keep our existing funds unless we find a 501©(3) organization to be our new fiscal host or become one ourselves by September 30. (EDIT: Or, we just spend it all preemptively.)

Open Collective Foundation’s also email writes that:

We will be providing assistance and support to you, whether you choose to spend out and close down your collective or continue your work through another 501©(3) organization or fiscal sponsor.

and so we’ll be contacting them as soon as possible to see if we can arrange a solution with just their help.

But: in the mean time (and in case they can’t help us, given the suddenness of this announcement) we need your help to find solutions–and we will probably need them urgently. If you have any help you can provide us, any services you can recommend, or anything that might help us quickly (and as painlessly as possible, given the short notice) transition to another service, that would be greatly appreciated. Fair warning that this will also likely derail the March financial update until we have a clearer picture of what we’ll do and if OCF can help us going forward.

Thanks, and hopefully we can resolve this situation without difficulty.

    • Chris Remington@beehaw.org
      4·
      9 months ago

      For collectives currently hosted by Open Collective Foundation in the US, if you are curious about Open Collective Europe and our fiscal hosting offerings, please reach out to us. We are here to assist during this transition, serving as the equivalent of a 501©(3) in the US. Alongside our partner organizations, such as Open Collective Inc. and Open Source Collective, we are mobilizing to provide solutions to ensure the continuity of your work. Feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns at oce@opencollective.com

      Source

    • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      Hi, Feddit.uk Admin here. We just launched our fundraising at Open Collective, so the on-boarding meeting is fresh in my mind and our fiscal host said that we could always go with Open Collective EU as he pay for our hosting in Euros. So I reckon they can be pretty flexible with this kind of thing. You’ll have EU users and probably get some donations in Euros, which should be easy enough to get your foot in the door there, assuming they have any regional requirements.

      Anyway, sorry to hear about all the mess, having just set it all up I can imagine the hassle it would be to start over again but I am confident you can find another fiscal host on Open Collective and it should then be a fairly seamless switch over (at least as far as the general users are concerned). Good luck.