Future of fiscal hosting
Hi folks, The XSF needs to decide on the future of its fiscal hosting programme. For those unfamiliar, fiscal hosting is a service the XSF has been offering for a few years now. It allows qualifying XMPP-related projects to essentially use the XSF as a way to receive money (e.g. donations from sponsors) and pay expenses (e.g. server costs). This saves projects from the trouble of setting up their own organization, bank account, and so on. To help organize this, we use the Open Collective platform which was purpose-built for this kind of arrangement. However, Open Collective have let us know that they will be raising their prices in 2026: https://pricing-2026.opencollective.com/ Under their previous pricing, our usage did not incur any costs and we were able to use their platform for free. They are planning to charge us ~$15/month per project ("collective") that we host. This is very expensive relative to the amount of funding we are enabling. For example: We currently have 5 collectives, and I checked their "estimated annual budget" earlier this year when the new pricing was announced (income was calculated by OpenCollective based on the prior 12 months of activity): Mellium: $15/month == 180% of their annual budget Prav: $15/month == 50% of their annual budget diasp.in: $15/month == 1000% of their annual budget Bifrost: dormant, $0 raised during past 12 months Prav iOS app: $15/month == 178% of their annual budget If we end the fiscal hosting programme, we will need to transfer to existing projects any funds that we are currently holding for them. If we continue, we need to agree that the expenses are justified. I propose this topic as an agenda item for the next board meeting (15th December). In the meantime, if any members have opinions, please feel free to share them. Regards, Matthew
On 12/5/25 5:49 AM, Matthew Wild wrote:
Hi folks,
The XSF needs to decide on the future of its fiscal hosting programme.
For those unfamiliar, fiscal hosting is a service the XSF has been offering for a few years now. It allows qualifying XMPP-related projects to essentially use the XSF as a way to receive money (e.g. donations from sponsors) and pay expenses (e.g. server costs). This saves projects from the trouble of setting up their own organization, bank account, and so on.
To help organize this, we use the Open Collective platform which was purpose-built for this kind of arrangement. However, Open Collective have let us know that they will be raising their prices in 2026: https://pricing-2026.opencollective.com/
Under their previous pricing, our usage did not incur any costs and we were able to use their platform for free.
They are planning to charge us ~$15/month per project ("collective") that we host. This is very expensive relative to the amount of funding we are enabling. For example:
We currently have 5 collectives, and I checked their "estimated annual budget" earlier this year when the new pricing was announced (income was calculated by OpenCollective based on the prior 12 months of activity):
Mellium: $15/month == 180% of their annual budget Prav: $15/month == 50% of their annual budget diasp.in: $15/month == 1000% of their annual budget Bifrost: dormant, $0 raised during past 12 months Prav iOS app: $15/month == 178% of their annual budget
In discussing this a few months ago with you and Sam Whited (the other O.C. admin), I came up with an alternative. If we host only one collective, O.C. will provide the service for free. Thus if we drop all but Prav and Prav iOS (our two most active collectives) and ask them to fold Prav iOS under the Prav umbrella, we could continue to host Prav. However, one could argue that hosting only one collective somewhat defeats the purpose... Peter
On Fri, 5 Dec 2025 at 12:49, Matthew Wild <mwild1@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi folks,
The XSF needs to decide on the future of its fiscal hosting programme.
Apologies for the double post, but Mathieu highlighted that I had overlooked some communication from Open Collective. They wrote:
In the message we sent, we initially recommended the $59 / $649 plan because it seemed you were using the Wise or PayPal payout option.
One important part of our pricing is that we're counting "Active Collectives" which we currently define as having a transaction in the month. According to this metric, XSF currently have 0 or 1 active collective in the last months, meaning you should fall on the free tier if you're not using the Wise or PayPal payout option. https://pricing-2026.opencollective.com/?recommended=discover&period=monthly
Organizations like the XMPP Standards Foundation are definitely the target audience for our platform, and generally for our non-profit organization. It would be a shame to have you leave the platform because of this new pricing. If my explanation above is not enough, I'm willing to further discuss and find a satisfying arrangement to make sure this doesn't happen.
Regards, Matthew
On 12/5/25 6:06 AM, Matthew Wild wrote:
On Fri, 5 Dec 2025 at 12:49, Matthew Wild <mwild1@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi folks,
The XSF needs to decide on the future of its fiscal hosting programme.
Apologies for the double post, but Mathieu highlighted that I had overlooked some communication from Open Collective. They wrote:
In the message we sent, we initially recommended the $59 / $649 plan because it seemed you were using the Wise or PayPal payout option.
One important part of our pricing is that we're counting "Active Collectives" which we currently define as having a transaction in the month. According to this metric, XSF currently have 0 or 1 active collective in the last months, meaning you should fall on the free tier if you're not using the Wise or PayPal payout option.
Well, here's the other problem I have with this new pricing model. We use Wise to reimburse volunteers (and, to date, to complete payouts from O.C. to fically hosted projects) because it saves us a lot of money compared to old-fashioned wire transfers. Do we really want to pay a $25 bank fee every time we do a payout? Maybe there are other options (e.g., transfer funds from O.C. to our bank account and then to Wise, rather than using a Wise integration directly at O.C.), and I can look into that, but it seems rather Byzantine. Peter
Hello everyone, Following up on the discussion regarding fiscal hosting after a Board meeting: The Board has reviewed the current program and agrees that, at its current scale, the effort and administrative overhead are not justified. There is consensus to phase out the fiscal hosting program in its current form. We plan to handle this carefully, supporting existing hosted projects in transitioning to alternative funding mechanisms such as direct donations, Liberapay, or other platforms. This will help reduce disruption while ensuring fairness to the projects. Please let us know if you have any immediate concerns or suggestions regarding this transition. We aim to ensure a smooth wind-down without impacting ongoing project activities. Kind regards, Guus On Fri, Dec 5, 2025 at 2:13 PM Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im> wrote:
On 12/5/25 6:06 AM, Matthew Wild wrote:
On Fri, 5 Dec 2025 at 12:49, Matthew Wild <mwild1@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi folks,
The XSF needs to decide on the future of its fiscal hosting programme.
Apologies for the double post, but Mathieu highlighted that I had overlooked some communication from Open Collective. They wrote:
In the message we sent, we initially recommended the $59 / $649 plan because it seemed you were using the Wise or PayPal payout option.
One important part of our pricing is that we're counting "Active Collectives" which we currently define as having a transaction in the month. According to this metric, XSF currently have 0 or 1 active collective in the last months, meaning you should fall on the free tier if you're not using the Wise or PayPal payout option.
Well, here's the other problem I have with this new pricing model.
We use Wise to reimburse volunteers (and, to date, to complete payouts from O.C. to fically hosted projects) because it saves us a lot of money compared to old-fashioned wire transfers. Do we really want to pay a $25 bank fee every time we do a payout? Maybe there are other options (e.g., transfer funds from O.C. to our bank account and then to Wise, rather than using a Wise integration directly at O.C.), and I can look into that, but it seems rather Byzantine.
Peter
Hi all and thanks Guus for the update
The Board has reviewed the current program and agrees that, at its current scale, the effort and administrative overhead are not justified. There is consensus to phase out the fiscal hosting program in its current form.
I missed most of the discussion regarding this as I was travelling! This is not the decision I was hoping for, mainly because I think it's good for XMPP to have its own funding support rather than rely on more centralised alternatives like the Open Source Collective, but I do agree that Open Collective's originally quoted fees were inordinate. I just wanted to check if there has been any further communication with Open Collective regarding this? They seemed open to negotiation, so perhaps they can get rid of the Wise fees or reduce costs in some other way, if we ask them. (The quoted discussions were from an email conversation between Open Collective and myself, who didn't know much about the details and only wanted to initiate the discussion. Personally, I think their pricing was made thinking of a few large projects and didn't take into account a multitude of small projects like XMPP has). (Of course all this is assuming the fees are the main reason for deciding to discontinue the programme, and low participation etc. were secondary issues)
We plan to handle this carefully, supporting existing hosted projects in transitioning to alternative funding mechanisms such as direct donations, Liberapay, or other platforms. This will help reduce disruption while ensuring fairness to the projects.
Please let us know if you have any immediate concerns or suggestions regarding this transition. We aim to ensure a smooth wind-down without impacting ongoing project activities.
Moving forward, I wanted to share some general notes regarding the Indian situation since that was brought up but not covered. Being from India, I have been hanging out in the MUCs of and participating in a few of these projects. That said, what follows is with my "personal hat" rather than that of any project ;-) Besides limited payment options (India is very finicky about letting payments in), "having a legal entity to collect donations on our behalf" is also an important service for projects based in India. Indian law does not allow donations except for very specific purposes like education, so the way we do it via fiscal host is that the fiscal host receives donations, and individuals in India then "bill" the fiscal host for the "work" they do (as far as Indian-facing accounting is concerned). This is what I've been advised to do for my NLnet grant as well, to just declare it as income (and potentially pay taxes on it; I'm "fortunately" under the tax ceiling at the moment). I wonder if there is some way the XSF can help this happen regardless of Open Collective or not (and without putting too much burden on Peter who has already gone through a rather unpleasant time signing up for Indian money transfer services before we ended up going for bank transfer!)? Personally, I had my eye on XSF fiscal hosting for Convo as well once it got stable after the NLnet grant concluded, so this is something of a setback (I have Liberapay linked to my personal account but it's a legal grey area and I'm not sure if I'll be able to continue it). Alternatively, perhaps there's some other organisation we're in touch with who's more in the business of moving money around? We could work out a system where the XSF vets projects and then passes them on to the other organisation to do the actual administrative work. Finally, regarding participation in the programme: I do think early-stage projects (that are yet to grow big enough to manage their own things, but just need a head start) are the ones that get the most benefit from this programme, so it helps to have the option ready for when such a project comes up, even if no such projects are there at the moment. I'm going to be self-centred and pull up Convo as an example again. Assuming Open Collective fiscal hosting is discontinued, perhaps we could set up a place to collect names of such projects who think they would benefit from some kind of fiscal-hosting-type support, and if we think there's enough interest we can start looking into how they can be supported? I like the idea suggested (I think by Guus, in the MUC?) of continuing to list projects that are looking for funding. That would help increase peoples' trust even if the projects are opting to use a less-known platform for whatever reason. Best, Badri
Hi all, Thanks Badri for raising these points, they are helpful. On Open Collective: beyond the exchanges already shared on this list, there has not been further negotiation that I am aware of, that changes the overall picture. While Open Collective indicated some willingness to discuss pricing or arrangements, we concluded that fees were not the only issue. Ongoing administrative effort, payout handling (including Wise and regional constraints), and reliance on person-specific processes were equally important factors. For that reason, the decision to wind down the programme does not hinge on Open Collective alone, and moving to a different platform would not materially address the underlying concerns. I do recognise that fiscal hosting can be particularly valuable in regions with legal or banking restrictions, including India. At this time, however, I'm not seeing a way for the XSF to offer that service sustainably without recreating the same overhead under a different form. The points about early-stage projects and the value of having an option ready are noted and will be kept on record. They can inform any future discussion of lighter-weight alternatives, such as improving visibility for vetted projects seeking funding. For now, the focus remains on an orderly transition for existing hosted projects rather than designing a replacement programme. Kind regards, Guus On Sat, Dec 27, 2025 at 11:11 AM Badri Sunderarajan <badrihippo@disroot.org> wrote:
Hi all and thanks Guus for the update
The Board has reviewed the current program and agrees that, at its current scale, the effort and administrative overhead are not justified. There is consensus to phase out the fiscal hosting program in its current form.
I missed most of the discussion regarding this as I was travelling! This is not the decision I was hoping for, mainly because I think it's good for XMPP to have its own funding support rather than rely on more centralised alternatives like the Open Source Collective, but I do agree that Open Collective's originally quoted fees were inordinate.
I just wanted to check if there has been any further communication with Open Collective regarding this? They seemed open to negotiation, so perhaps they can get rid of the Wise fees or reduce costs in some other way, if we ask them. (The quoted discussions were from an email conversation between Open Collective and myself, who didn't know much about the details and only wanted to initiate the discussion. Personally, I think their pricing was made thinking of a few large projects and didn't take into account a multitude of small projects like XMPP has).
(Of course all this is assuming the fees are the main reason for deciding to discontinue the programme, and low participation etc. were secondary issues)
We plan to handle this carefully, supporting existing hosted projects in transitioning to alternative funding mechanisms such as direct donations, Liberapay, or other platforms. This will help reduce disruption while ensuring fairness to the projects.
Please let us know if you have any immediate concerns or suggestions regarding this transition. We aim to ensure a smooth wind-down without impacting ongoing project activities.
Moving forward, I wanted to share some general notes regarding the Indian situation since that was brought up but not covered. Being from India, I have been hanging out in the MUCs of and participating in a few of these projects. That said, what follows is with my "personal hat" rather than that of any project ;-)
Besides limited payment options (India is very finicky about letting payments in), "having a legal entity to collect donations on our behalf" is also an important service for projects based in India. Indian law does not allow donations except for very specific purposes like education, so the way we do it via fiscal host is that the fiscal host receives donations, and individuals in India then "bill" the fiscal host for the "work" they do (as far as Indian-facing accounting is concerned). This is what I've been advised to do for my NLnet grant as well, to just declare it as income (and potentially pay taxes on it; I'm "fortunately" under the tax ceiling at the moment).
I wonder if there is some way the XSF can help this happen regardless of Open Collective or not (and without putting too much burden on Peter who has already gone through a rather unpleasant time signing up for Indian money transfer services before we ended up going for bank transfer!)? Personally, I had my eye on XSF fiscal hosting for Convo as well once it got stable after the NLnet grant concluded, so this is something of a setback (I have Liberapay linked to my personal account but it's a legal grey area and I'm not sure if I'll be able to continue it).
Alternatively, perhaps there's some other organisation we're in touch with who's more in the business of moving money around? We could work out a system where the XSF vets projects and then passes them on to the other organisation to do the actual administrative work.
Finally, regarding participation in the programme: I do think early-stage projects (that are yet to grow big enough to manage their own things, but just need a head start) are the ones that get the most benefit from this programme, so it helps to have the option ready for when such a project comes up, even if no such projects are there at the moment. I'm going to be self-centred and pull up Convo as an example again. Assuming Open Collective fiscal hosting is discontinued, perhaps we could set up a place to collect names of such projects who think they would benefit from some kind of fiscal-hosting-type support, and if we think there's enough interest we can start looking into how they can be supported?
I like the idea suggested (I think by Guus, in the MUC?) of continuing to list projects that are looking for funding. That would help increase peoples' trust even if the projects are opting to use a less-known platform for whatever reason.
Best, Badri
Hi all, Thanks for the clarifications Guus. I did wonder if the high fiscal hosting fees was the main issue or merely the trigger for a broader discussion that was going to happen anyway. I've stated what I wanted to, so I suppose we can revisit the discussion whenever we do start thinking about alternate ways to support projects. I suppose this will happen after the existing Open Collective hosted projects are migrated. (By the way, I appreciate that this is happening gradually and making sure the projects have enough time to set up a stable alternative).
The points about early-stage projects and the value of having an option ready are noted and will be kept on record. They can inform any future discussion of lighter-weight alternatives, such as improving visibility for vetted projects seeking funding.
One low-hanging fruit could be to list such projects on the XMPP Newsletter (in place of the XMPP fiscal hosting projects that used to be listed). This actually has the added advantage that we can support all XMPP projects looking for funding and are not restricted to only the ones we are fiscally hosting. People are sometimes hesitant to donate on "unknown platforms" (which could include "details on project website") so having the donation page listed by the XSF would help increase trust. We would have to work out a vetting process first, of course. Best, Badri
participants (4)
-
Badri Sunderarajan -
Guus der Kinderen -
Matthew Wild -
Peter Saint-Andre