Our fiscal hosting service, Accountable, gives unincorporated groups a safe and transparent way to receive funding and manage their money. We take care of the admin and finance, so you can focus on changing the world.

What you get, in a nutshell 🥜

• use of our CIC bank account to receive donations and grants

• your own digital page

• multiple admins on your page for collaborative decision-making

• a team taking care of all your transactions for you

• Reimburse your volunteers. Pay invoices for services

• support around financial decisions

• a support team available 7 days a week

• resources on community building from The Social Change Nest

• a network of groups to share expertise, questions and support with (Slack and OC)

About us

The Social Change Nest specialises in creating and supporting people-powered networks and social movements. After years of supporting and incubating grassroots groups, we know how important it is for groups to have a supportive infrastructure, especially around managing money.

Through Accountable, we offer secure fiscal hosting and a transparent money management system for foundations, groups, movements and networks in the UK and abroad.

We also provide a grant management and distribution service, making it easy for funders to support small groups by acting as a link between the two, and taking on the financial admin.

You can read more about us and Accountable in the next section.

In early 2020, the world was struck with the devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic. As always, communities have been responding in amazing and generous ways to ensure people are not going through it alone. Seemingly overnight, many community led groups formed across the country who provided vital community support to those who are most at risk from the virus and falling through the cracks of traditional services. However, as needs were evolving quickly and without systems in place groups quickly faced challenges informal community groups have faced for years. Many of these groups, especially those that spring up quickly in a time of crisis, have no bank account, legal status, formal governance, decision-making structures or back office systems. Whilst this allows them to act quickly it can pose a significant problem when it comes to financial accountability.

To meet this challenge, within 10 days of the first lockdown we launched a fiscal hosting service utilising the Open Collective platform providing an easy way to raise and manage finances transparently and support collaborative governance. It allows groups to set up an account quickly to start receiving donations and reimbursing community volunteers so that they can grow and sustain the great work they do. We then set up a Community Interest Company to house this service and transferring it into an asset locked community focused entity.

To radically shift the way funding flows and power is shared to enable groups, networks and people to participate, influence and improve their societies.

Making a decision

We understand that choosing a fiscal host and a digital infrastructure to manage your finances can be a big decision!

That's why we have put together the following resources to help you understand what you'll get by using Accountable.

A good place to start is our About Accountable section followed by our Questions and Answers.

We also recommend looking at our Fiscal Host page on Open Collective, and even clicking through some of the 'Collectives' we currently host. It's a good example of how your page can look like if you decide to use Accountable.

Finally, if you want to find out more about The Social Change Nest, & Agency, head on over to our website here and our fiscal hosting page here.

Ready to apply? Let's get started!

The first step is to go to our Open Collective page. You can apply by clicking the apply button in the top right hand corner.

You'll be asked to fill in a couple of things, like your name & email, and name of your group. Everything else we can look at together later.

Tell us about your group

Once you've applied, you'll receive an email from us asking you to fill in a short form.

You'll need to list at least 2 page admins (don't worry, this can always change later), your activities, any social media/website links, etc.

When you submit your form, you'll be asked to book an Onboarding call.

More about this on the next page!

Accountable's fees are 5% on incoming transactions (donations) plus £42 set up costs.

The set up costs cover our team’s time to get your group up and running. This includes: application process, due diligence checks, assisting with page set up and writing an expense policy, and conducting a training for your admins on how to use the platform. If your group can’t pay the set up costs upfront, we can arrange for this to be taken off once you have donations coming in.

Want to apply for formal grants?

🏦 We also provide a grant management service. This means you can apply for formal grants using us as a Host. We usually request a 7% fee on the incoming grant. Please get in touch if you're looking to apply for funding.

In some cases, groups can have their fees covered by their funders - so if you are planning on applying for grants it's always worth asking if this fee can be covered by them separately to the donation they are giving for your project.

It's really up to your group how you want to set up your page and this can be updated at any time in the future!

There are just 2 things we ask all our groups before we can make their page live

1. Upload your Expense Policy

What is an expense policy? It's a simple, but important document that details how you spend your money, when and how you pay out expenses to volunteers/people you work with and who makes decisions around finances.

We don't take any position on how you choose to spend your money. But we are making payments on your behalf as you request them. It's important that if we have any questions about an expense, we can look at your policy and hope it will answer this so we can process things for you.

How to write one? Expense policies can vary from a few sentences to several paragraphs. We recommend having a look at the collectives on our page and reading some of their policies to get a sense of how you might construct yours.

We've also put together this guide to help you:

How to upload it? We need your expense policy to be completed and uploaded to the page before you can go live.

To upload it, one of your page admins needs to login to Open Collective and click on My Collectives on the right hand dropdown.

Go into Settings --> Policy --> Expense Policy. Then you can drop in the text there and click save.

2. Add your team to your page

All our groups need to have at least 2 page admins at all times.

The person who initially applied for the page will be the one who has the main login.

To add more page admins, all they have to do is:

1. Login to Open Collective and go to your group's page

2. Go into Settings --> Team

3. Then navigate to the bottom where it says Add Team Member

4. Create a new user, add their email and name, and then make sure to select Admin for their role.

5. Click save

Your team member will receive an invite on the email you put down. *This email can often end up in their spam folder*! All they have to do then is click on the link on the email to accept being part of the page.

We've created a series of videos that shows you how to get set up with Open Collective here.

That's it!

There is plenty more you can do on your page, as we will have explained during our onboarding call. But these are the two things that we ask you to have before we can make you live!

Open Collective (OC)

Open Collective is an online funding platform for open and transparent communities. They evolved out of the climate movement, and have grown to provide the tools to raise and share finances in full transparency to movements worldwide.

They are a US based C corp registered in Delaware, with a global team distributed between Aix-en-Provence, Auckland, Brussels, Berlin, Guadalajara, New York, Madrid, Paris, Shropshire, Navi Mumbai, Vancouver and Wellington.

Open Collective (OC) is a totally separate company to SCN/SCA. They build and maintain the platform that we use to Host our groups. We have a great working relationship with Open Collective and a huge amount of respect for the incredible work they do.

You might notice we link to their (very extensive) help documents quite a lot in this guide. That's because OC is their platform and we don't think there's anyone better to explain how to use it than them. We're here (both in this guide and our support services) to compliment OC's user support service rather than to replace it.

The Social Change Agency

SCA is an Ltd and the sister company of SCN. It was started in 2015 by Esther Foreman, and is today the UK’s leading movement building agency, specialising in creating and supporting powerful social movements for impact. Everything we do, from programme delivery and design, to unconferences, movement building strategies to communities of practice, is designed to connect people and enable them to build the skills, knowledge and networks to make change happen.

Both organisations work together and complement each other.

To help you with any Accountable questions, we operate a ticketing system 🎫

Whenever you have a question for us, just fill in this form.

To fill out the form we just need your name, email address, the name of the group you are from and query type. Choose from:

• Tech Queries 💻

• Expense Queries 💰

• Donation Queries💸

• Page Setup Queries 📝

• And ‘Other’❔

You can then add in the name of your query and a description of the issue. Once you have submitted this it will be forwarded on to our support team, where they will be able to assist you in the best way possible 👍

In case you missed it - here is the link to raise a ticket

The Social Change Nest CIC

Our details are:

• 📍237 Pentonville Road, London, N1 9NG

• 📧 hello@thesocialchangenest.org

• 📱+44 7712872277

• 🖥️ https://thesocialchangeagency.org/fiscal-hosting/

• 🖥️ https://opencollective.com/the-social-change-nest

• 🖱️https://www.facebook.com/socialchangenest/

This is where we get to know a little bit more about each other and show your admins how to use the platform.

We'll cover some important items such as: how people can donate to your page and how do you pay an expense or invoice.

The call takes about 45 minutes and it's important that everyone who will be managing your page (should be at least 2 people) is able to attend.

This will through a video call platform, such as Zoom or Google Hangouts, as we need to share our screen to talk you through the platform.

Grant money from a Funder

One of the benefits to having a fiscal host is that it allows you to apply for several grants that would be otherwise unavailable to you as an unincorporated group. We are always happy to support applications for funding for our groups. Just get in touch with us and we can have a chat about it as we will often need to sign the grant contract and receive the grant on your behalf.

For any grant application where we are required to enter into a grant agreement on your behalf we ask for a 7% fee. This is because the amount of admin and the risk we're taking on on your behalf is much greater than with a standard hosting arrangement.

Sometimes the Funder will cover this fee, other times the fee is coming out of the funding you receive.

Submitting an Expense

Whether you're reimbursing a volunteer for their time, paying an invoice directly to a vendor or making a solidarity payment to someone in your community, the first step is for the person receiving the money to submit an expense. Open Collective's guide on how to do that is here. In order to make sure everything is compliant, we ask that you try to make sure the person receiving the money is the same person that submits the expense. If they need additional support to do that you can always get them to email us.

Click here for a video walking you through the process of submitting an expense.

People can select one of the above 3 options when requesting money from your page:

Get your Accountable page set up and live in 4 simple steps:

The whole process usually takes between 2 - 5 days, but could be longer if you want to take more time in setting up your page.

Adding funds to your page

If you have an initial balance you need to transfer over, you can do this either through a bank transfer for via credit card, take a look below to find out how.

Receiving donations

Fundraising using Accountable is very easy!

You can receive one off donations, monthly contributions, sell event tickets & others!

People can donate two ways:

1. Credit/Debit Card - the platform uses Stripe, which is a third party software, to process card payments safely and in real time. Stripe takes a fee 20p + 1.4 % of the amount sent. Neither us or Open Collective are ever able to waive this. In addition to the 5% hosting fee.

2. Bank Transfer - if someone donating to your page selects bank transfer, they will receive an email from us with our bank details and a reference number. They need to make sure to include the reference number when they transfer to ensure we can allocate the donation back to you.

Your Contributors

For the most part we try not to get directly involved in your relationship with your contributors. Whether they're members of your community or just generous supporters, we prefer to let you run your group in your own way and only step in if there's a problem. If anyone has a general question about donating to your page we recommend sharing this FAQ for contributors from OC. If someone has a specific problem or need help with this, just reach out to us and we'll do our best to help.

Once you have your admins set up, your expense policy up, and anything else you want to add to make your page your own, drop us an email and we will press the go live button!

That's it, you are good to go and can immediately start using Accountable.

Have any questions?

Fill out our form to raise a ticket and our support team will help find a solution!

Find out more about our user support on the next page 👉👉👉

This function is useful for when your group has used a service and has received an invoice that needs to be paid.

Submitted directly to your page

Organisations and businesses can submit invoices directly to your page. It is very similar to the reimbursement function, however there is space to add in a PDF of the invoice onto the expense. Once they have done this it will come up as an expense that you can then approve on your collective's page.

Submit on their behalf

If you prefer, you can create the invoice on their behalf and add their contact details so they receive an email to review it. They will then have a chance to make any amendments or add attachments before sending it back to you for final approval.

This function is often used by mutual aid groups and solidarity funds. Individuals can make grant requests to your page for any amount and submit this as an expense. This then goes through to the page admins to be approved in the same way as the reimbursement or invoice would.

When you set up your page one of the requirements is an Expenses Policy - this is where you can outline exactly what your group gives money out for, and if you are expecting to have individuals request grants this would be the place to outline the sort of grant requests your group would approve.

The grant request function also has a space to add in documents as an attachment, some mutual aid groups ask people to put in proof of address in this section. Your groups' Expenses Policy should outline exactly how you plan to use and distribute your funds.

Submitting an Expense

Whether you're reimbursing a volunteer for their time, paying an invoice directly to a vendor or making a solidarity payment to someone in your community, the first step is for the person receiving the money to submit an expense. Open Collective's guide on how to do that is here. In order to make sure everything is compliant, we ask that you try to make sure the person receiving the money is the same person that submits the expense. If they need additional support to do that you can always get them to email us.

Click here for a video walking you through the process of submitting an expense.

If you or someone in your group has already purchased something, such as flyers for an event you have hosted, then this option is the best option to transparently reimburse your costs.

On this feature you can add in the receipt of the items that have been purchased, add in the value and then use the expense to reimburse the person who made the original purchase.

It is a great way to transparently get your money back for things that have already been bought for your collective, and if someone has a number of receipts for things they have purchased, they can all be added to one expense - as long as they are all going to the same bank account.

Are you a community with a social purpose?

We host all types of social groups, movements, activists and networks whose purpose is to create positive social change in their communities & world.

We also work with Foundations, Philanthropists, and Government who are looking to support these groups.

The Social Change Nest acts as a host to over 200 groups. You can imagine that means a lot of admin to make everyone's payments. In order to keep this as efficient as possible we have a specific process we use to pay expenses once they've been approved.

Payment dates

Our finance team make all the payments three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The payments are usually made by 1pm those days and will include any expense that has been been approved by your admin, as long as you have enough funds in your page for it. Due to the volume of transactions we have to process, we're not really able to do this any faster but we do clear all the approved expenses each time. If you have an urgent payment request, we recommend submitting it on a Sunday, Tuesday or Thursday and making sure an admin approves it straight away. That way it will be paid the following day.

When you don't have enough funds

If you don't have the funds to cover an expense, Open Collective won't even let us mark it as paid and we will not be able to honour it. Whilst it is possible to approve an expense before you have to money to cover it, we really don't recommend this. It's important to manage expectations in your community, especially if you're making emergency solidarity payments to vulnerable people. If you don't have the money to cover expenses it's usually best to talk to people in your community and explain the situation. We always do our best to support collective admins in these situations but, ultimately, the responsibility is yours to communicate this to your community.

Receiving donations from groups or organisations

OC allows for any organisation to make a payment straight to a group's page. They will have set up an organisation page but this is a relatively straight forward process and it allows for a local business, trade union branch or local government to have their donation clearly displayed on your page.

It's also very easy to transfer money between two different groups with groups pages on OC. For more information check out Open Collective's guide to collective to collective donations.

Tiers and Goals

Anyone can donate to your page. You can share the link to your page with supporters and on social media and use it like a crowdfunding page. You can use it to collect membership subs as well as donations and sponsorship. One of the first things you'll need to do when you've created your page is set up the tiers and goals, once that's set up your page can receive all kinds of regular and one off payments.

Approving an expense

Any of your collective admins can approve an expense. It's a very simple process, you can read more about it here. The only rule we have is that admins can't approve expenses that they have submitted themselves. If an admin needs to claim for an expense or invoice themselves, we ask that they get one of the other admins in the collective to hit the approve button for them.

If you want to make a payment or donation to another collective with an Open Collective page you can find out how to do that here.

Privacy and expenses

When you submit an expense you naturally have to include some information about your identity as well as your bank details. If you follow all the instructions on the page this information should stay completely private and only be visible to the admin team, the person submitting the expense and us. Only the subject line (which gives an overall description of what the money is for) should be public. If the person making the claim makes a mistake with any of this, you can find out how to edit an expense here.

If you need to contact the person making the claim to ask to clarify something, you need more information or if you want them to edit the expense to remove personal information you can use the comments. These are private and only visible to the admins, the host and the person making the claim. You can find out more about expense claims here.

What happens to the data open collective gathers? Is it stored securely and would it ever be supplied to a third party agency (eg. immigration authorities)?

Open collective is GDPR compliant and stores data in a secure way. You can find their privacy policies here.

You can also find The Social Change Agency's privacy policy here.

Conversations

This works like a chat function for your collective. Anyone with an Open Collective account is able to leave you a message on your page and you can respond it. You can moderate this and remove messages that are spammy or unhelpful or turn the whole feature off if you prefer not to use it. You can find out how it works here.

Updates

This feature allows you to post updates to your page and also emails them to all of your contributors. You can make these updates quite long and include image files. Some of our collectives use it as a kind of newsletter to keep their supporters up to date and to push specific fundraising drives. You can find out more about updates and how they work here and for a really good example of how a collective can use them check out Oxford Mutual aid.

Events

Open Collective's event system works a bit like Facebook events or Eventbrite, only the money from ticket sales goes directly into your collective budget. You can find out more about how it works here but it's worth noting this is still in the experimental stages.

I know we need to have at least two page admins. But can we change who these admins are?

Yes, you can change your admins whenever you need to by logging into your page, going to settings, and then 'Team'. However, you do need to email us your new admins names and email addresses otherwise we will keep contacting your old admins as they will be in our contact list.

Can I change my Collective name and activities?

If your project/group has changed to something completely new, please email us to let us know about these changes. We may have to go through the due diligence process again.

Can I connect two Collective's pages?

Yes! However, this is process that OC has to do for you. If you want to do it, please email support@opencollective.com describing what you'd like.

I would like to close my page and transfer the remaining funds - how do I do this?

It's super simple! Create an expense for the remaining balance of your page to be paid out to whomever you and your admins have decided it should go to.

Once this has been paid and your balance is £0, go to your settings and in the 'Advanced' section choose either to Delete or Archive your collective. Doing this will also cancel recurring contributions.

I suspect that there is fraud or abuse in my Collective’s handling of money, what do I do?

If you suspect fraud or abuse in your Collective’s handling of money, please get in touch with The Social Change Nest right away. You can reach the dedicated Open Collective help line at: 07712 872277 or email: accountable@thesocialchangeagency.org.

If there is conflict within the collective, what should we do?

Similar to the creation of a clear and transparent expense policy, we recommend that each collective creates principles and values or community guidelines with members of the collective that can be followed in the instance that there is conflict. Therefore, if there is conflict within the group, members can refer to these to these agreed processes for how to move forward. However, if the conflict persists, please get in touch with us at at: 07712 872277 or email accountable@thesocialchangenest.org.

Open Collective have produced an excellent guide to the terms used on the platform and you can find that here. We recommend taking a quick look before your onboarding call to get a sense of what the terminology is. Here are a few other phrases or terms you might hear our team using or find in this guide.

Admin

When we talk about your admins we mean what Open Collective call "collective admins". This is the two (or more) people who run your OC page, approve and reject expenses and act as our contact points with your group. This can be anyone from your group, and we don't take a position on how you organise or what other responsibility these people have. They can be a group leader or coordinator, a treasurer or just a member of the community who is willing to look at the page. We'll always refer to them as "admins" and ask that you have at least two of them added before we approve your page.

Expense

We generally refer to any payment made from your page as an expense. We know that many collectives are actually making small solidarity payments or grants rather than just reimbursing volunteers for their expenses. We use the word "expense" as a catch-all term for payments you make from your page as that's the language Open Collective uses.

Collective

It is Open Collective’s name for any group who is being hosted on their platform. Groups can be very small, or very large. To secure a Fiscal Host, they will need to meet that hosts' terms and will undergo a simple verification process.

We ask all groups to have an Expense Policy on their page. This helps the individuals who are submitting expenses and can minimise any disagreements or inconsistency in payment requests. It also aids with collaborative decision making amongst the admins to ensure expenses are approved in a united way.

We suggest your Expense Policy include things such as:

• How regularly your group will be approving/rejecting claim

• After you approve a claim, it goes to our team and we will process this on our next working day which are: Monday, Wednesday and Fridays.

• What kind of expenses you’ll accept

• What do you need in order to approve an expense request

• How they can contact you if they have questions or concerns about this

Expenses Policy examples

• XR International Support team Finance Policy

• XR expense policy

• All for Climate spending money guidance

• Gulp expense policy

Manjaro (UK) Expense Policy

Expenses will be covered for costs which support and progress the Manjaro project, for example and non-exhaustively:

• Travel and subsistence costs for conferences and related activities;

• Hardware purchases and upgrades which support the development of Manjaro;

• Software purchases, upgrades, and licenses which support the development of Manjaro;

• Hosting and SaaS/PaaS etc. charges related to the project.

Expenses should be discussed on the forum and/or Telegram and nominally approved, and normally prior to any purchases being made, before being submitted to the Collective. You must upload a valid receipt or invoice clearly showing the total amount, date, legal address, and what the payment is for.

Parents and Community Against Pollution Expense Policy

Our expenses are basically related to the cost of printing flyers, leaflets, posters, as well as video and graphic work, and legal expenses incurred in the Nocado campaign. In order to maximise the proceeds of our fundraising and minimise our reimbursement admin., campaign supporters are encouraged to only claim out-of-pocket expenses that exceed £10 per claim. Food, drink, accommodation and travel expenses will normally not be reimbursed. We do require formal pre-approval for ALL expenses described above; please email PACAP on pacapcic@gmail.com, BEFORE incurring any reimbursable expenses. *In line with the full transparency provided on our PACAP Collective website, the available budget, all financial (other than incognito) contributions, and expenses reimbursed can be viewed on these PACAP Collective pages.

PLEASE NOTE THE GENERAL EXPENSE PROCESS OF OUR FISCAL HOST.

How to submit an expense

Expenses will only be paid if there is enough income to cover the expenses within the collective. Expenses must be documented with a receipt or an invoice and approved by the collective admin.

Valid expenses are

Provider receipt Provider invoice, mandatory for large amount Both the receipt and invoice must include the provider name, address, amount etc. Additionally, any invoice should be addressed to OC UK (see host detail below), as at the end of the day, Open Collective UK is the client. However, we understand that for some services it might not be possible to have a different billing address than the delivery or credit card address. We may still accept those invoices on a case by case basis. When the billing address can differ, it must be addressed to OC UK.

There are 2 ways to submit an expense:

1) a member of the collective pays & submits the expense (with the receipt) through OC, this has to be approved by the admin of the collective. On the back end, SCN will pay back the submitter. Ideally, the receipt should be to the host name.

2) Collectives can submit an invoice to the host (via OC). In this case, the invoice must include the mailing address and be the host organisation, and also reference the Collective name. If you are submitting an invoice for your work to a collective hosted by the Open Source Collective, you'll need to submit your invoice with the full detail of the host as explained.

Host details are the following: [enter]

You must upload a valid receipt or invoice clearly showing the total amount, date, legal address, and what the payment is for.

Feel free to use the above templates and edit to include your group’s details, or create your own. Once your Expense Policy is ready, simply upload it to your page. You can edit your policy at any time.

What is fiscal hosting?

Most of the time local or grassroots groups (especially those that spring up quickly in a time of crisis) have no bank account, legal status, governance, decision-making structures or back office systems. Whilst this allows them to act quickly it can pose a problem when it comes to financial accountability.

A Fiscal Host is a legally constituted organisation that enables a Collective to transact financially without needing to legally incorporate themselves. They can hold a Collective’s funds in their bank account and generate invoices and receipts for Financial Contributors. Having a Fiscal Host also allows the Collective to receive donations from bodies that would not legally be able to donate to an individual's bank account, like foundations, councils, NGOs and organisations. It also protects against the risk of people donating directly into individual’s bank accounts, with little to no accountability of where that money will go.

The Fiscal Host, in this instance The Social Change Nest, acts as an umbrella organization for the Collectives in it. We are the legal entity, with a bank account, that is hosting your collective’s money. The Open Collective platform keeps a public record of all the transactions.

Why do we need a fiscal host?

Most community or mutual aid groups won’t have a bank account, but will need to handle money. Whether donations, groceries or gas meters. Managing this can quickly become an admin headache.

Using a private bank account, whether attached to a platform like Kickstarter, or to transfer payments directly is never a good idea. The lack of transparency can lead to arguments, fall-outs or even exploitation. Plus all the burden falls to the one account holder, which isn’t sustainable. Using a personal bank account also means formal organisations or NGOs who might want to donate cannot due to legal reasons.

On the other hand, creating a dedicated bank account is tricky for many quickly formed groups who are not a registered charity or business. Registering as either can be a lengthy process, and neither legal status accurately describes the function of a mutual aid or community group.

Having a Fiscal Host bypasses both of these options and the Open Collective platform itself makes all incomings (like donations) and outgoings (like shopping expenses) visible, so clear and accountable to the whole group. The responsibility for signing off expenses can also be shared among group members. Using us as a Fiscal Host on Open Collective serves a specific, but significant function, which we hope will give groups the support they need to focus on other pressing issues.

We're sad to see you go! You are welcome to come back anytime 😃

Please follow these steps to close your page and account with us:

If you have money left in your account

The first step is to clear out your balance.

To do this, simply submit an expense for the remaining balance of your page to be paid out to whoever you and your admins have decided it should go to.

If your project/group is winding down and you have nowhere to allocate funding to, you might want to consider supporting a fellow group hosted by us, or even our Pitch Perfect series where groups can come pitch for some extra funds for their activities.

To do this, you don't even need to submit an expense. Simply log into Open Collective, find a group you want to support, click Contribute, and donate your funds to the group. When selecting contribution method pick your organisation's budget, as show in the image below. You should see your organisation's name and (Organization) after it.

When you have cleared your balance

Once your balance is £0, you are ready to close your page.

1. One of the page admins needs to login, and go to Settings

2. From your Settings tab, click Advanced section choose either to Delete or Archive your collective. Doing this will automatically cancel recurring contributions, so you don't have to worry about that!

3. All done! If you could drop us an email to let us know when you Delete your page, we would really appreciate it.

What if there are multiple collectives in my area?

That’s great! If there are multiple collectives in your local area that are working towards the same cause it may be that you decide to form one collective in order to pool resources, financial contributions and increase impact. Or not, it’s up to you.

We suggest you get in touch with the other collective in your area to collaborate on how best to work together. You can become a sub-collective of theirs.

I would like to start a collective for my ward, but my borough or city already have a collective, what should I do?

You could contact the collective admin for the borough or city group to see if starting a sub-collective group within the wider borough or city group would be beneficial to organise members more locally. However, that is entirely up to you.

Would the server be able to cope if this becomes huge?

Open Collective is already hosting 1000s of collectives around the world and has dedicated servers. They will be able to handle the extra traffic.

Is Open Collective the same as crowdfunding?

We get that question a lot, so here's a visual that explains the main differences between the two:

It says my expense has been paid but there is no money in my account.

In line with our new system of processing payments, we mark the expense as paid and then make the bank transfer a few hours later. We ask our groups to allow between 8 and 12 hours for funds to reach their bank. If it has been longer than this and you still haven't received your payment, please get in touch so we can look into it.

I set up a recurring payment, but it's not come out in the second month. Is something wrong?

To prevent the contributor from being charged twice in a short time frame, if they contribute after the 15th of a given month, the next charge will not be the 1st of next month but the month after.

For instance, if someone has set up a recurring contribution on June 29th, the platform won't charge them again until August 1st, and then the 1st of the following months.

How do I cancel my direct debit monthly payments?

You can do this through your bank or on OC. You can login to OC and select on your settings 'manage their contributions' and adjust the amount or cancel them altogether through their account settings. This is done through the Manage Contributions section and you can .

How do people put money in?

Payment can be made directly to your Open Collective account by credit or debit card or by bank transfer. Anyone can contribute by making a one time donation, or a recurring donation, or participating in a fundraising campaign for a specific purpose.

How do people get money out?

Any time anyone in your collective needs money they ’. Each Collective will need to have agreed an expense policy detailing what is an appropriate expenditure and what is not. The person who needs money can submit a receipt or pdf of an invoice alongside their details. When the expense is submitted, it needs to be approved by an administrator of the collective (collectives define their own administrators). Once approved, it will show up on the collective’s public (sensitive personal details withheld) dashboard along with the other outgoings.

What if people can’t use technology to donate?

We recognise that there may be vulnerable members of the community that need support and are unable to use technology to make contributions in return for the help they receive. There is an option to raise a contribution (on the platform) for someone else and after raising this contribution you would receive the bank details and a unique reference number to pay in the amount you raised. You could tell this to the person who could then make the bank transfer using the unique reference number, without having to interact with the actual platform.

If you have any more creative solutions then please let us know and we will share amongst all of our collective groups. It may be that volunteers may want to take cash or a cheque directly for any expense in these situations, but please note that authorities have suggested not handling cash in the current climate.

How do you decide who approves the outgoing expenses?

Each collective has one, or more administrators who can approve expenses. It is entirely up to the collective to choose or nominate their admins to approve expenses. These do not need to be approved by The Social Change Nest, but we do require that you have a minimum of two to be hosted by us.

There are different ways to manage this; some collectives have a rule that the admin must alternate every couple of months, or that the admins must be made up of a mix of genders at any time. It is up to your collective to make decisions around the expense policy and who approves expenses inside your collective. All expenses (except personal information contained on receipts) are public for transparency purposes.

I have been delegated to approve expenses, but I’m no longer able or do not want to do this anymore, what do I do?

There is a community chat feature on the Open Collective webpage where you can indicate to your collective that you are no longer able or do not want to approve expenses anymore and ask who else would like to take on the role.

How many people can we have as “admins” that are able to approve expenses?

The number of people who can approve expenses is up to each collective.

Some collectives are more informal, with only one admin approving expenses. Others have a formal decision-making process, some have very specific rules over what expenses can be paid for, and what needs a higher level of approval beyond one admin. It is important to have a discussion as a collective and with your collaborators to agree guidelines for approving expenses including how many people are “admins” at one time.

The Social Change Nest requires you to have a minimum of two appointed admins at any given time.

I’ve submitted expenses, but they haven’t been approved, what do I do?

You should get in touch with the collective’s admins to discuss further.

I spent money on supporting neighbours or getting my mutual aid group started before our collective collected donations, can I get reimbursed for it?

This would depend on the expense policy each collective has set up and if it includes money spent before the collective has received donations.

How do we ensure the validity of submitted expenses?

To claim an expense, members must submit a photo of a receipt or invoice. Extra evidence could also be required - for example, proof of address. It is up to the collective to decide what evidence is needed.

All expenses and invoices are public, so everyone can see how much money was spent and on what (excluding private contact details only visible to that user, Collective Admin, and Fiscal Host) for transparency and for members to hold each other to account.

What will you do if there is money left over on the page?

What happens to any money left over is in the hands of the collective and their agreed policy. It is important to agree guidelines amongst your collective for what to do in this instance and to make this clear to everyone in the collective.

If the collective has had no activity for a significant amount of time, The Social Change Nest will contact the collective administrators to decide where that money should go. If we do not hear back from the administrators within 12 weeks, SCA will cease being the Fiscal Host for the collective and the remaining collective funds (residue funds) will be redistributed equally amongst all our collectives.

How can we be sure our money is safe?

There is a public record of money coming into the Collective’s Open Collective Account and money going out in expense payments. The platform does not allow a collective to spend more than they have received in donations so there is no chance that another collective could spend your money.

What happens if we don’t yet have enough budget to pay for all the submitted expenses?

The expense will remain unpaid until the collective has sufficient funds to cover it. It is not possible for a collective to pay expenses they do not yet have the funds for so we would advise checking with your collective before spending money on something.

Are there any payment charges?

There is no surcharge on contributions made by bank transfer (BACS) as the money would go directly to the bank and is not processed by a third party.

I don’t want to be charged the credit or debit card fees, can I pay by bank transfer?

Yes. There is an option to pay by bank transfer. When you select this option, you will receive further instructions to complete the bank transfer.

Can contributions be used to pay for an individual's living expenses (food, rent etc.)?

This would depend on the expense policy each collective has set up. Each collective must have their own expense policy. This makes sure that there are clear rules on what money can be spent on and that all members of the collective are treated the same way.

Where do we get money from?

Money can come from individual donors, institutional funders, members from your collective, or anyone who would like to give to the collective’s cause and activities.

Do we have our own bank account or is it shared with other collectives?

By using The Social Change Nest as a Fiscal Host, this means that your contributions will be stored in The Social Change Nest’s bank accounts. Contributions are not shared with other collectives meaning that what you raise is what you can spend.

You can view our full Terms and Conditions here:

To see our Civil Disobedience Policy, please email us at accountable@thesocialchangenest.org

This FAQ page is to help groups looking to start using Open Collective to manage their finances, or anyone who is interested in The Social Change Nest’s (“SCN”) use of the Open Collective (Accountable) platform.

For Open Collective technical support or user FAQs please visit: https://docs.opencollective.com/help/collectives/collectives

If you have a question that is not answered by this page, please email accountable@thesocialchangeagency.org or call 07712 872277 (this phone line will be open from 9am to 5pm on weekdays. You can reach us by email outside these hours, and we will return your call during these working hours).

What does it mean that The Social Change Nest is our Collective’s Fiscal Host?

A Fiscal Host is a legally constituted organisation that enables a Collective to transact financially without needing to legally incorporate themselves.

You can find out more about fiscal hosting here.

Do we have to use The Social Change Nest as a Fiscal Host?

No. There are other Fiscal Hosts such as All for Climate and Extinction Rebellion. It can be a good idea to have a Fiscal Host that is in the same country that you operate in.

External inquiries

I’m a journalist and would like to talk to you about what you are doing, who should I contact?

We would love to hear from you. You can reach the dedicated collective helpline at: 07712 872277 and we will put you in touch with the right person to talk to alternatively, you can email: accountable@thesocialchangenest.org

I am a philanthropist, from a trust or foundation, or local authority wanting to support this support, how can I help?

If you are from a trust or foundation or you are a philanthropist, you can make contributions to individual collectives to go towards their activities.

If you want to help The Social Change Nest's efforts to further scope and develop the best way to support local and grassroots groups through Open Collective, please get in touch via telephone at 07712 872277 and we will put you in touch with the right person to talk to alternatively, you can email: accountable@thesocialchangenest.org