Open Collective Foundation Shut Down: What Are Your Options Now?

On December 31, 2024, Open Collective Foundation (OCF) officially dissolved. Over 600 collectives — mutual aid groups, open source projects, community organizations, and grassroots movements — lost their fiscal host. Millions of dollars in community funds had to be spent down, transferred, or returned.

If you were one of those 600+ groups, you already lived through the scramble. If you weren't, this story matters anyway — because it reveals the fundamental fragility of depending on someone else's infrastructure to hold your community's money.

OCF's dissolution wasn't sudden, but it was fast once the announcement came:

• Late 2023: Internal financial pressures mount. OCF had been operating at a deficit, with its 5% host fee insufficient to cover the operational costs of serving hundreds of collectives with varying needs and compliance requirements.
• Early 2024: OCF announces it will wind down operations. The community reacts with alarm — hundreds of groups depend on OCF as their legal and financial home.
• March 15, 2024: Last day to receive new donations through OCF. No new money in.
• June 30, 2024: Last employees depart. The organization transitions to wind-down mode with minimal staff handling remaining disbursements.
• September 30, 2024: Spend-down deadline. Collectives must have a plan to use remaining funds, transfer them to another fiscal host, or return them to donors.
• December 31, 2024: OCF officially dissolves. Any remaining funds are distributed according to dissolution protocols.

OCF charged a 5% fee on all contributions received by its hosted collectives. On the surface, that sounds reasonable — even generous compared to some fiscal sponsors charging 8-15%. But the math didn't work.

Fiscal hosting is operationally expensive. For each collective, OCF had to:

• Maintain legal compliance as the collective's fiscal agent
• Process reimbursements and disbursements (often manually reviewed)
• Handle tax filings and 1099 reporting
• Respond to support requests from hundreds of volunteer-run groups
• Manage bank accounts, payment processors, and reconciliation
• Perform due diligence on how funds were being used

A collective receiving $10,000/year generated $500 in fee revenue. That $500 had to cover all of the above. For the many small collectives that processed only a few thousand dollars annually, the fee revenue didn't come close to covering costs.

The larger collectives subsidized the smaller ones, but not enough. OCF operated at a structural deficit that, over time, became unsustainable. The 5% fee was a promise the organization couldn't keep.

It's important to distinguish between OCF (Open Collective Foundation) and the Open Collective platform. The platform — the website where collectives managed their finances — continued to operate. Open Collective Inc. transitioned to OFiCo (Open Financial Collective, Inc.), which took over stewardship of the platform.

The platform still exists and still hosts collectives, but under different fiscal hosts. The organizational home that OCF provided — the 501(c)(3) status, the bank accounts, the compliance infrastructure — is what disappeared.

For groups that used OCF, the platform transition meant their public page and transaction history could persist, but they needed a new entity to actually hold and disburse their funds.

OCF's dissolution hit a wide range of communities:

• Mutual aid groups that relied on OCF for tax-exempt status and transparent financial management. Many of these groups operate on thin margins and lack the capacity to incorporate independently.
• Open source projects that used OCF to accept donations and pay contributors. Without a fiscal host, accepting corporate sponsorships becomes legally complicated.
• Community organizations — neighborhood groups, tenant unions, immigrant support networks — that needed 501(c)(3) status to receive foundation grants.
• Event organizers and collectives that used OCF as a lightweight alternative to forming their own nonprofit.

For many of these groups, OCF's dissolution wasn't just a financial inconvenience — it was an existential threat. Groups that can't hold money can't operate. And the scramble to find alternatives happened while these groups were still trying to serve their communities.

If you're a collective looking for a new fiscal home — or a new group trying to figure out how to manage money — here are your realistic options:

1. Hack Club Foundation

Originally created to support youth coding projects, Hack Club Foundation has expanded to host a broader range of collectives and community projects. They offer fiscal sponsorship with transparent financial management through the HCB (Hack Club Bank) platform. Fees are competitive, and the platform is designed for transparency. The limitation: their mission focus means not every type of collective is a good fit.

2. Other fiscal hosts on the Open Collective platform

The Open Collective platform supports multiple fiscal hosts beyond the now-defunct OCF. Some of these are regional (specific to a city or country), some are thematic (focused on open source, social justice, etc.). Fees vary widely — typically 8-10%, with some charging up to 15%. The advantage is continuity: if you were already on the platform, migrating to a new host preserves your history and public page.

3. Self-incorporation

Some collectives used OCF's dissolution as motivation to incorporate as their own nonprofit. This gives you complete control but comes with significant overhead:

• Filing for 501(c)(3) status costs $275-$600 in IRS fees^[1] and takes 3-12 months
• You'll need bylaws, a board of directors, and annual filings
• Ongoing compliance includes annual Form 990 filing, state registrations, and potentially an audit
• You'll need your own bank account, accounting system, and someone to manage it all

For groups processing $100,000+ per year with stable leadership, self-incorporation can make sense. For smaller, volunteer-run mutual aid groups, the overhead usually isn't worth it.

4. Community-owned infrastructure

The OCF dissolution exposed a fundamental problem: when your community's financial infrastructure is controlled by a single organization, you're at the mercy of that organization's financial sustainability and decisions.

The emerging alternative is community-owned financial infrastructure — platforms that are accountable to the groups they serve, not to a parent nonprofit's balance sheet. This means:

• Financial tools owned and governed by the communities that use them
• Transparent operations where users can see how the platform sustains itself
• Distributed architecture that doesn't create a single point of failure
• Governance mechanisms that give communities a voice in platform decisions

OCF's closure taught the community organizing world several painful lessons:

1. Platform dependency is organizational risk. Any tool, platform, or fiscal host can shut down, change terms, or raise fees. Groups need to plan for this the way they plan for any other risk.
2. Low fees can be a trap. OCF's 5% fee attracted hundreds of collectives, but it wasn't enough to sustain the service. Cheap is great — until the cheap option disappears and you're scrambling with no backup.
3. Fiscal sponsorship concentrates risk. When one organization hosts 600+ collectives, its dissolution becomes a systemic event. Diversifying across multiple fiscal hosts or building independent capacity reduces this concentration risk.
4. Transitions need to be planned, not reactive. Groups with governance structures and documented financial processes handled the transition better than groups where one person held all the institutional knowledge.
5. Community infrastructure should be community-owned. The fundamental misalignment wasn't OCF's fault — they tried their best. The problem is the model: one nonprofit, funded by thin fees, responsible for hundreds of groups' financial lives. Communities need infrastructure they control.

If you're a collective displaced by OCF's closure, or a new group trying to avoid the same trap:

• Audit your current setup. Where does your money live? Who controls access? What happens if that person or platform disappears?
• Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Maintain relationships with at least two financial platforms or fiscal hosts. Keep reserves accessible through a backup channel.
• Document your governance. Groups that survived the OCF transition best had written decision-making processes, multiple signatories, and institutional knowledge that didn't depend on one person. See our governance guide for a practical framework.
• Think long-term about infrastructure. The cheapest option today might not exist tomorrow. Look for platforms that are structurally sustainable — where the business model can actually support the service level you need.

Browse the Goodkeep directory to find mutual aid groups near you and see how they've adapted since OCF's closure.