Adopt and integrate Open Collective

[gusaus]

Open Collective provides a platform for financial transparency and collective funding, offering a structured way to support the WordPress project and its community. It allows individuals and organizations to contribute funds toward various aspects of the WordPress ecosystem, such as core development, community events, plugins, documentation, and more.

Benefits

• Increased Financial Resources - By leveraging Open Collective, the WordPress project and community gains access to a wider pool of financial resources beyond traditional sponsorship models. This enables the project to diversify its funding streams and reduce dependence on a few large sponsors, fostering a more resilient financial support system.
• Empowering Community Participation - Open Collective encourages community involvement by allowing anyone to contribute financially, irrespective of the contribution size. This inclusive approach empowers individuals who might not be able to make significant donations but still want to support WordPress financially.
• Transparency and Accountability - The platform offers transparency regarding fund allocation and spending, which instills trust within the community. Contributors can see where their money goes and how it benefits the project, fostering accountability and ensuring that resources are used effectively.

Ways WordPress can adopt and integrate

Top-level WordPress collective

There are several WordPress collectives for a variety of projects and purposes, but nothing 'official' to sustain core and grow the community. While there's been discussion about adoption and integration (several mentions in Open Source and how we sustain ourselves - WordPress.org Project), there's no centralized way to fund community projects, teams, working groups, and contributors (and recognize those contributions).

One of the main reasons (for lack of widespread adoption/success) is murkiness around Open Collective as it's both an open source platform (https://github.com/opencollective) and fiscal sponsorship service (fiscal hosting in Open Collective speak).

We recommend using Open Collective's entity specifically set up to sustain open source projects to remove the burden/responsibility of WPF handling funds. OSC also provides a variety of services - including providing employment, payroll, and benefits to contributors.

Implementation steps

• Share this issue with community evaluators and decision-makers
• Create the "WordPress" Collective: The WordPress Sustainability team will help set up the top-level "WordPress" collective on Open Collective. The collective will be branded to reflect WordPress's identity, fostering a sense of community ownership.
• Apply to the Open Source Collective Fiscal Host
• Invite team members: Community leaders, team reps, and project maintainers will be invited to become active participants in the collective. Their involvement will encourage other contributors to join and contribute to the WordPress ecosystem's success.
• Set up projects for existing Community Teams, projects, and groups interested in using the WordPress collective to streamline collaboration and fundraising efforts.
• Resource Allocation Process: Establish a transparent process for allocating resources to projects within the collective. Engaging a review committee consisting of community representatives will ensure alignment with the project's mission.
• Streamline Fundraising Efforts: Coordinate fundraising campaigns under the top-level collective, with clear objectives tied to strategic goals. Donors will have the option to support specific projects or contribute to the collective as a whole.
• Transparent Financial Reporting: Maintain transparent financial reporting for the top-level collective. Regularly publishing financial reports and impact assessments will build trust and enhance accountability.
• Promote the Top-Level Collective: Launch a promotional campaign to raise awareness about the top-level "WordPress" collective. This campaign will involve outreach through WordPress.org, newsletters, social media, and community events.
• Encourage New Projects to Join: Actively encourage new projects and initiatives to host their efforts under the top-level collective. The team can offer support, resources, and recognition to attract diverse and impactful projects.

"Five for the Future" Fund

A Fund is a profile designed for one or a few large sponsor companies to move chunks of money and frictionlessly distribute it to as many collectives as they want.

• The Funds admins approve what money gets spent on, but when it comes to invoices, purchase orders, payment processing, tax forms, etc, the Open Collective Fiscal Host (aka Fiscal sponsor) takes care of all that and interfaces with the payees.
• It's up to the creators of the Fund what the process is. Open Collective has a 'request a grant' function that some use to receive proposals from projects. Others use their Fund to process payments for an external program with its own process. Others have an internal team who decides where the money goes and they don't take requests. Open Collective Fiscal Host carries out decisions about what the money is spent on and handles the logistics, but the Fund administrators are in the driver's seat.

Implementation steps include:

• Share this issue with community evaluators and decision-makers
• Reach out to Open Collective for more information and/or help with setting up a Fund

"WordPress" Project on the FundOSS Fund

Projects are a lightweight way for collectives to manage budgets for initiatives independent of their parent collectives. The FundOSS team (in collaboration with WordPress community admins) would create a project to

• Collect and distribute match funds for WordPress FundOSS rounds
• Allocate money, receive grant proposals, and other functionality provided by funds (if there is no stand-alone WordPress Fund)

Implementation steps include:

• Share this issue with community evaluators and decision-makers
• Reach out to FundOSS (via their #fundoss channel in Open Collective Slack) for more information and/or help with setting up a project on the FundOSS Fund

Related Issues and Discussions

• Refine and extend Five for the Future #39
• Leverage and Extend the FundOSS fundraising format #22
• Leverage and contribute to the Open Website Alliance #41
• Extend the do_action hackathon format #40

Reference/Resources

• Open Source and how we sustain ourselves (WordPress.org Project)
• Introduction to the economic pillar of sustainability (Sustain WP podcast)
• Wishes to make WordPress’ more sustainable (Sustain WP podcast / Sustainability Team roadmap)

[gusaus]

Realizing this project is now being surfaced during team meetings (for example), I wanted to provide some additional context for those able to attend...

...basically to say that we can't actually move forward with next steps before leadership approves the proposal.

Share this issue with community evaluators and decision-makers

You'll see the first implementation step has been checked off as I shared this Canvas with @josephahaden + other leaders/decision-makers several months ago and have been periodically following up ever since.

[meeware]

Noting for the record - rather than news - I'm sure this has been discussed but I wanted to log it here:

Effective September 30th, 2024, Open Collective Foundation has ceased its fiscal sponsorship program. The Foundation’s mission was to promote projects in the US with the following charitable purposes:
increasing access to educational resources and training,
creating a positive social impact and
developing tools to improve civic participation within cities or communities.

from https://opencollective.com/foundation

[meeware]

Noting for news:
Announcing FLOSS/fund: $1M per year for free and open source projects
https://floss.fund/blog/announcing-floss-fund/

[gusaus]

@meeware While the dissolution of Open Collective Foundation affected a few (I think just one WP focused collective), most projects and programs in Open Collective's open source ecosystem (https://discover.opencollective.com/?tag=open+source) have used/continue to use Open Source Collective (https://oscollective.org/) as their fiscal sponsor.

This post from Lauren Gardner, Executive Director of Open Source Collective may help alleviate the confusion between the two entities https://opencollective.com/opensource/updates/regarding-the-announcement-to-dissolve-open-collective-foundation

[gusaus]

I should also point out we've been recommending Open Source Collective as the fiscal sponsor/host not only for the official WordPress project/community but programs like Five for the Future #39 for quite some time.

This is because the platform benefits (outlined in the issue description) combined with the services OSC provides (https://docs.oscollective.org/what-we-offer) could alleviate issues with capacity, governance, and transparency while creating more financial and career opportunities for contributors.