Why Become a Fiscal Host?

Fiscal Hosts can help multiple Collectives to thrive by offering their legal status, a bank account and help with vital admin

Fiscal Hosts provide a very valuable role for Collectives looking to make a difference.

By becoming a Fiscal Host, you can enable Collective’s to accept and disburse money in full transparency, without the Collective having to apply for their own legal status and bank account. Collectives can then pursue their mission, be accountable to funders and automatically keep good records.

Fiscal Hosts offer support by acting as an umbrella organization for Collectives. The host:

• Shares its status as a legal entity with the Collective, so they don't have to apply for their own

• Holds the Collective's funds in its bank account

• Often provides administrative support to the Collective, such as managing contributions and expenses, and handling tax filings, accounting and compliance

In exchange, they often charge Collectives a fee, such as a percentage of incoming funds.

Fiscal Hosting is a big responsibility…

The Open Collective platform provides a suite of tools to help you manage admin and expenses more efficiently. However, you should be sure that you have the time, resources and expertise to do this before becoming a Fiscal Host.

You will be responsible for all activity passing through your bank account, as well as ensuring you and your Collectives are compliant with all relevant laws and requirements.

Who Becomes a Fiscal Host?

A number of different groups use the Fiscal Hosting model to achieve their goals, including:

• Movements who want to host their various chapters or subgroups

• Open Source projects hosting a range of unincorporated distributed collaborations

• Decentralized organizations consisting of several semi-autonomous teams or projects

• Meetup networks containing many local groups

• Incubators or accelerators supporting early-stage teams

• Advocates such as cooperatives, who want to help certain startup ventures to get going

• Foundations who wish to give grants to unincorporated projects

A Fiscal Host is set up to manage multiple collectives, these capabilities are reflected in the tools we have built for fiscal host management. If you want to manage a singular Collective, we advise creating an Independent Collective to do this. This will provide a more streamlined experience.

Some Fiscal Hosts may choose to apply for charitable status so they are eligible for tax-exemptions and/or grant funding. However, we recommend researching what is available in your location, and whether it matches your goals and mission.

Here are a few examples of some of these different types of Fiscal Host in action:

• All for Climate is specifically focused on climate and social justice projects based in the Eurozone.
• Open Source Collective is a host that caters exclusively for Open Source projects worldwide, offering fundraising, budgeting and grantmaking tools. It is an approved nonprofit organization (with 501(c)(6).

You can discover more Fiscal Hosts on our Open Collective platform.

What you need to become a Fiscal Host

To set up a Fiscal Host, you need:

• An established legal entity in the country where you plan to operate

• A bank account

• At least one admin to manage tasks (although we recommend having more than one)

You may also wish to set up an account with payment processors including Stripe, Wise and PayPal to use some of the features and automations on Open Collective. This can also be valuable for security.

As a Fiscal Host, you will need to carry out a range of tasks on behalf of your Collectives, including taxes, accounting, compliance, financial admin and expense payments. So you will need to make sure you have the skills and capacity to do this effectively and accurately.

You will also be liable for all money flowing through your account. You will need to ensure that Collective transactions are legitimate, and are not linked to money laundering or other illegal activities.

We strongly advise you to establish strong policies to decide which Collectives to accept, as the actions of one bad actor can impact all the Collectives you host.

Many Fiscal Hosts charge a fee in exchange for the services they provide. On Open Collective, this is often a percentage of the Collective's incoming fees (typically between 5-15%, depending on the host). See Setting Your Fiscal Host Fees for more on this.

If you do not charge fees to your Collectives, you will be able to use the Open Collective platform for free. If you charge, we will charge you a Platform Share of 15% of your incoming revenue. For more information, visit our Pricing page.