Setting Goals and Tiers
Setting financial goals and support tiers on Open Collective allows your Collective to be clear about your targets, encourage contributions and track your progress
If you’re looking to raise money for your Collective, it’s a good idea to create incentives for your community to contribute to your cause.
There are two main ways to do this through the platform:
Showing your goals gives your community a sense of how much you’re looking to raise, and why. You can also show how close you are to reaching your target.
Navigate to your Collective's Dashboard > Settings > Goals
Creating tiers encourages your community to give a certain amount in exchange for certain rewards or acknowledgement. It also gives them a sense of what their donation can achieve.
Navigate to your Collective's Dashboard > Tiers
Goals
You have two ways of setting goals on Open Collective.
You can set a goal balance, which shows how much you have raised so far toward a set total. You can also set a yearly budget goal, which sets a target amount you want to have in your account after operating costs.
These goals will be sent in your emails to contributors, and you can also choose to show them on your collective page.
You will also be asked to select a title for your goal, and a short description which explains what achieving your goal will mean for your collective and the people it is designed to help.
Tiers
Tiers are a way of giving potential contributors a guide to what they should give and to encourage them to give more with rewards and targets.
You can set a large number of tiers or just a few, depending on your strategy and what you can support.
You can use tiers to:
Offer rewards to people who give a certain amount, such as merchandise or supporter status
Show people how much you need to achieve a certain task, such as purchasing supplies for a single beneficiary
Some open source projects also offer a support tier, which gives companies access to someone who knows the codebase to assist them promptly with queries or issues.
Customizing your tiers
You can create and edit tiers by navigating to your Collective’s Dashboard > Tiers.
First, choose whether you want to enable the default contribution tier. Ticking this box adds a default "Donation" tier that allows contributors to easily donate whatever amount they choose, either as a one-time or recurring contribution.
By clicking on the “Create Contribution Tier” button, you will be able to create a custom tier for your collective. You can do this multiple times.
As you set the options from the form, you will see a preview of your tier developing on the right side of the window.
You can create your tier using the following options. Many of these are optional. Remember to press the “create” button once you’re ready to publish. Type: Is your tier a generic tier, or is it related to a membership, service, product or a donation?
"Generic" is the default contribution type that shows all fields as customizable entries.
"Membership" is a recurring contribution where contributors get a special status, such as a right to vote on decisions.
"Service" means donors get a service in return.
"Product" is where donors get a gift or item.
"Donation" is a simple contribution to the cause.
If in doubt, use the "Generic" tier.
Name: Describe the tier clearly. You could describe what status the contributor would receive (“Gold Sponsor”) or what that donation would achieve (“Family Groceries”)
Description: Share more information about the purpose of the tier. You can talk about what rewards contributors would receive, or what the donation would help you achieve.
Interval: Set the frequency of the contribution. This can be one-off, monthly, yearly, or flexible.
Amount type: Fix the donation amount as a set figure, or make it flexible so the contributor can set it themselves.
Amount: If your tier asks for a fixed amount, write it here. If the amount is flexible, you can add a suggested amount as well as a minimum.
Available quantity: You can limit the amount of people that can contribute to each tier. This is useful for special edition items or one-time events etc.
Button text: You can add your own text for the tier button to make it more compelling. Such as donate, join, contribute. You can also add emojis if you wish.
Goal: You can set a goal target for each tier to encourage donations.
Standalone page: You can set up a separate page for your tier where you can explain more about what you’re trying to achieve and how contributors are making a difference. This will also enable you to generate a direct link.
Editing and deleting tiers
If you wish to edit the details of your tiers, navigate to your Collective's Dashboard > Tiers. Find the desired tier and click “edit tier”. Once you’ve made your changes, click “save” and the new version will go live.
To delete your tier entirely, click the “delete” button at the bottom of the form.
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