Setting your Fiscal Host Fees

As a Fiscal Host, you have the option to charge Host Fees to Collectives in return for your services.

Open Collective gives you the flexibility to decide how much your Collectives pay you for your fiscal hosting service.

These fees are presented to Collectives when they search for potential Fiscal Hosts. If you do decide to charge a Host Fee, the default approach is to take a percentage of the Collective's incoming funds. However, there are other options if you add funds manually.

Once you have decided on your preferred fees, navigate to your Organization’s Dashboard > Settings > Fiscal Hosting and select your preferred fee (this will be a percentage of incoming Collective funds)

If you wish to define custom host fees for selected collectives you can do so via hosted collectives. Learn more on the Hosted Collectives page.

You can also define custom host fees when adding funds manually. Learn more on the Adding Funds page.

How fees affect your Open Collective pricing

If you do not charge any fees to your Collectives as a Fiscal Host, we will not charge you for using the Open Collective platform. This will give you access to all of our tools and features for free.

However, if you do decide to add a Host Fee, we will charge you a 15% Platform Share, which is 15% of incoming revenue from Collectives. For example, if you charge a 10% fee, the share may look like this:

• Total raised by Collectives: $1,000

• Your Host Fee (10%): $100

• Our Platform Share (15% of your 10%): $15

For more information on this, go to our Pricing page.

Selecting the right fees for you

Ultimately, the decision on how much (if anything) to charge for your hosting services is up to you. But there are some factors you may wish to consider:

• What are your expenses? You may need to employ admins to ensure you provide your host services effectively. Consider how much you need to cover these costs and set fees appropriately.

• Collectives may make a decision on their host based on the level of Host Fees. Look into how much similar hosts are charging, and set a fee that you are comfortable with.

• Think about the value of what you are offering as a host. While some Collectives may simply look at the Host Fee figure, others will consider what they get in return. Some hosts may charge a Host Fee to cover valuable services that Collectives need.

We recommend being open with Collectives about how you have settled on your Host Fee level, should you decide to charge one. With a clear and well-thought-out page on Host Fee pricing, you can offer clarity on what Collectives are getting for their fees, and why they should select you as a host.

These pages can be included in your policies or on your docs pages. Here are some examples from Social Change Nest and Open Source Collective.

Seeing Host Fees in your accounts

Each month, you will receive a host report, which includes the amount that you have brought in via Host Fees.

Some hosts choose to move these fees to their own Collective for extra transparency.

To do this, create a Collective under your host and add the fees to it manually every month.