Fission supports open source initiatives and maintainers. We act as a Fiscal Host on Open Collective and we “host” Collectives. Each Collective supports a single initiative or codebase.
We are in alpha mode, working with a select group of initiatives to start.
Think of a collective as a group of people who work on and fund a specific initiative. I’m avoiding the use of the term “project”, because each Collective can have one or more Projects, which can be funded directly.
In addition to hosting Collectives, in some cases Fission also financially supports the projects by injecting our own funds.
I’m looking into becoming a Fiscal Host on OC…are there any specific things to look out for or consider that weren’t immediately obvious to you guys when first going through this process?
First of all, are you sure you want to be a Fiscal Host, and do the accounting and administration for multiple collectives?
We set ourselves up because there were few Fiscal Hosts when we started. And I’m pretty comfortable with the accounting overhead.
The main thing you’re going to want to do is be familiar with the tax and accounting implications in Australia (where I think you are based), and that you’re comfortable with your Stripe and Wise bank setups, and that you’ve got a good accounting back end for all of that.
Also, today you can skip the Fiscal Host and just connect your own organizations bank account, which didn’t exist when we started.
So to flip it around — what are you thinking of doing as a Fiscal Host?
thanks for the thoughts/prompts @boris - much appreciated.
Am I sure I want to be a fiscal host? Not yet!..and yes, the “independent collective” option that is now available is probably the better starting point.
My partner Kellie is an experienced bookkeeper and I’ve setup Stripe in the past, so I think we are ok from that side of it.
Your last question is really useful…I really like the forms of (self-)organising that OC is enabling with their platform, and if I could encourage people (particularly in Australia) to explore that path by taking care of their fiscal hosting then
BTW, one technical question…do you know if the OC platform can automatically adjust sales tax (VAT, GST etc) for products/services based on the country that the purchaser is in?
Yeah I figured being local to Australia would be one thing.
No it doesn’t support that.
I would mostly focus on open budgeting, reimbursement, and membership / donation style contributions.
Service or product focused sales is better handled by a proper ecom system. You as a Fiscal Host can still offer this and then top up the balance of the collective.
