People asked a lot of great questions that I didn’t know the answer to and tried to research, so to help folks considering the next move for their brigade get the authoritative answers they need the OCF team has agreed to join an AMA-style thread right here on our forum! They’ll say hello shortly, please post any questions you have about how using or moving to OCF works, and also re-post any questions you’ve already posted elsewhere so we can collect authoritative answers here
Hey, I just looked through some of the FAQ on your site. What payment methods are available for small, casual donations. Looks like Paypal and a credit card form input. Anything else?
For automated instant payments we offer credit cards, bank transfers, and paypal. We can accomodate some other payment methods but it’s manual and we can’t handle lots of tiny payments, but we have for example had people do a Go Fund Me and then send the money over in one chunk when it’s finished and we manually credit it.
Yes donations to Collective are tax-exempt, unless they are a payment for goods and services (and not a donation). Donors will get a tax deductible receipt automatically.
I am Mike Strode, Program Officer at Open Collective Foundation. I would be glad to have further conversation with anyone interested about our fiscal sponsorship offering.
We have hosted a range of CfA Brigades in past and at present. We are familiar with the type of work that you all do and generally have easily understandable systems to ensure you can access your funds without constraint. You can use my scheduling calendar to select a time for a conversation.
In the meantime, you can visit our Mission Impact Areas and How To Apply pages to learn more about the types of groups we host and how we evaluate new groups for sponsorship.
Hi, I am the co-captain of Code for Anchorage and we have several SMS apps that use Twilio. Some require A2P 10DLC registration for sending multiple texts messages, like our Land Acknowledgment Bot. This requires an EIN and use case. The goal is to reduces SMS Spam but it is relatively new so has just required a fair amount of overhead and fees so far. https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/1260800720410-What-is-A2P-10DLC-
Has OCF been a sponsor and registered for Twilio apps and how would multiple brigades use the same OCF EIN registration? Have you come across this before?
The short answer to the second question is no. We do not have any groups using this service at this time and we do not have any insight on the implications for multiple groups attempting to the same EIN for this function. Our approach to a request from groups to provide a new service offering is to examine the how rolling out that offering will impact the capacity of our team. We also host more than 400 projects under our fiscal sponsorship program and try not to implement offerings for one project which we would not be willing to support for all of them. Our fiscal sponsorship is best suited for groups who need a balance of flexibility, autonomy, and some key supportive services like our employment and payroll or liability insurance that helps groups navigate the space between scrappy grassroots startup and small, early-stage nonprofit org.
@brendanbabb sounds like we’ll need to inquire with Twilio support about the implications of multiple independent nonprofit projects registering separately under the common EIN of a shared fiscal host
Just a general note that services have varied approaches to how they can work with fiscally sponsored projects that all share an EIN. If it’s somewhere where we can set up one account and manage it centrally but give Collective access, we often can (e.g. OCF has a Google for Nonprofits account and this enables us to provide free emails for all Collectives with their own custom domain), or if the service is willing to create multiple accounts for different groups using our one status, we can enable that. We’re part of a pilot program at TechSoup that’s enabling fiscally sponsored groups to access TechSoup discounts via their umbrella org’s nonprofit status (which didn’t used to be possible).
Know offhand whether a non-US “brigade” is still eligible to be fiscally sponsored by OCF? Asking on behalf of http://g0v.london in UK
EDIT: I’ve read the international work policy and it seems to be ok, albeit not possible to give “grants” to anyone, or run a grant program within the community (though seemingly can simply pay them for work done?)
International activity that we can’t enable
Making grants or in-kind contributions to a non-US individual or organization, or “Model C”-type grantor-grantee fiscal sponsorship,
EDIT2: I didn’t read carefully, and a full read answered my question that it’s not possible with how the g0v civic tech network is structured without a US base
OCF indeed has a US focus, although if at least one of the main brigade admins/organisers is US based and/or major funding will come from US funders, we can work with people in other countries. We can pay expenses internationally, but the US connection has to be there.
I suggest looking at other options on OC if you’re not in the US, like OC Europe and Social Change Nest (UK) - depends what country you’re based in. We have a g0v group in OCNZ as well.
I guess I figured Code for America groups were all in America but perhaps that’s not the case?
Is there any possibility of somehow bridging from the end of coverage under CfA’s general liability to the renewal date on August 18th? The link says premiums are not pro-rated.
Also, the sign-up form asks you to agree to pay up to $600. As a small Brigade, $250 / year might be within our budget. We are unlikely to have any of the higher risk factors, but I also don’t like the idea of signing something saying I would pay up to $600.
What might be involved in some of the smaller Brigades consolidating to share insurance costs?
JMMaok: Is there any possibility of somehow bridging from the end of coverage under CfA’s general liability to the renewal date on August 18th? The link says premiums are not pro-rated.
If you are no longer fiscally sponsored by CfA you are likely no longer covered by their insurance, but this is a question for their insurance broker. From the OCF side, you’re welcome to only sign up for our insurance once yours is ending if your coverage can extend.
Also, the sign-up form asks you to agree to pay up to $600. As a small Brigade, $250 / year might be within our budget. We are unlikely to have any of the higher risk factors, but I also don’t like the idea of signing something saying I would pay up to $600.
It’s often less than $600 but we can’t find out the actual cost until we submit the application so we have to ask you to pre-approve the cost. If you have no employees or other risk factors it’s more in the $250 range.
What might be involved in some of the smaller Brigades consolidating to share insurance costs?
If you get together within a single Collective you can get one policy covering all of you.
@openmike In the OCF docs it states that there are possible vendor discounts but that the only tools that are mentioned are GSuite and Loomio. Is there a list of known vendors who will provide a discount via a Sponsorship? I note that Techsoup and therefore Slack do not. What are Brigades who used OCF doing about Slack? ZOOM?
Yes. Insurance follows the collective and the collective’s activities. You may want to consider additional complexities that may be in managing multiple brigades under a single collective such as who would be the signatory in a three-party agreement or whether it might create sponsorship challenges for a sponsor trying to give money to brigades in two different cities. Unless you are collapsing all of the administration of these two brigades, the savings realized could be pretty marginal compared to each having its own collective.
