Communities FAQ

What can I do with an Donate PR?

• Collect financial contributions

• Pay bills and reimburse expenses

• Provide automatic budget transparency

• Transact without incorporating your own legal entity

What is Donate PR good for?

Donate PR is great for all kinds of collaborative groups, like meetups, open-source projects, neighbourhood associations, clubs, unions, movements, conferences, non-profits, grant recipients, and incubators.

You shouldn't have to incorporate a legal entity, start a new bank account, and do bookkeeping just to collect and spend money for a project—and with Donate PR you don't have to.

Why should I use Donate PR?

Donate PR makes it easy to be transparent about your finances. We help you collect recurring or one-off contributions from sponsors, supporters, or members.

Spending from your Donate PR is simple: the person to be paid submits a receipt or invoice, you approve it, and they get paid. We believe that financial transparency creates stronger collaboration, so everyone can see how money flows in and out of your Community.

What do Communities spend money on?

There are as many answers to this question as there are Communities! It's up to each community to decide how to spend their funds.

Some communities delegate financial decision-making to a specific person or role, some develop policies about what should be funded, and others have processes to make spending decisions together as a group.

For ideas and examples, check out this article: Has Your Open Source Community Raised Money? Here’s How to Spend It.

Some common expenses are hosting costs, documentation, community moderation, printing t-shirts and stickers, conference travel expenses, food at meetups, time spent working on specific features, or even paying someone to work on a project full time!

For more details about how to spend money, see our documentation about expenses.

How do I pay people?

Money contributed to a Community goes to the bank account of the Fiscal Host. When someone wants to be paid, they submit an expense through your Community page. After you approve it, the person is reimbursed via PayPal.

Expenses are visible publicly, so everyone can see how much money was spent and on what (though private details like emails, names, and addresses are only visible to that user and the admins).

How much does it cost?

See details about Fiscal Hosts and pricing.

How can I pause or stop accepting contributions?

Remove all tiers and turn off flexible contributions.