Sustainability is also about having the financial freedom to work on things that matter. Funding models are a topic of major interest to individual developers all the way to large OSS initiatives. OpenCollective was part of our conversation at DINAcon 2019, so during the HACKnight we created a new organization, learned the ropes, debated the approach, and contributed to a selection of open source projects.

While the Internet is a great tool for helping people collaborate, it is still extremely difficult for groups to collect funds and use them transparently. As a result, we see initiatives, projects, and movements popping up here and there only to disappear quickly due to lack of funds. Imagine how many wonderful things didn't happen because funding - which is arguably the oxygen for most organizations - is difficult to sustain. Without an easy way to raise and manage finances, most of the ideas that can change the world are rarely able to break open from seed, let alone grow into a full-fledged tree. Excerpt from About - Open Collective

{ hacknight challenges }

As a first step, go to opencollective.com and explore the platform. It's pretty intuitive, and there is good documentation (which could use translation help) to get started. See how contributions are tracked and visualized to create transparency in the development process.

Create an account, and see how you can support your favorite projects. Apply to join the new DINAcon Organization and help us incorporate crowdfunding into our digital sustainability events. If you are here at the HACKnight, ask us for a Gift Card.

Add your own organization or project to OpenCollective and let us know about it so we can add it to a short list (see also our Who's-who of Swiss GitHub challenge) of some kind in the future. Compare this platform to the OSS Directory and let's think about some potential improvements and bridges that we could propose to the //CH/Open association.

Learn about the open source platform behind the website itself, build something with the open API, contribute to the open issues.