Updates and Contact#

When you’re building a community of contributors and supporters, it’s good to provide information about what their donations are enabling, express thanks, or notify everyone of any changes.

You can do this by sending regular updates on the platform and by responding to questions and issues promptly.

We offer tools on the platform to keep people informed and included.

Sending updates#

You can post updates to your supporters using the updates feature located on your Collective, Fiscal Host, or Organization's page.

Just go to your Open Collective page, event, or project, and scroll down to find your “Connect” section.

Here you can send updates by clicking “New Update” and view all previous updates from your Collective.

You can use this feature to:

Notify and thank contributors when you reach a certain milestone
Show contributors the impact of their donations
Inform users of updates to your policies, or strategy
Announce new team members, or thank departing ones
Update contributors on how you’re responding to an issue
Encourage them to support a project or attend an event
Notify them of upcoming absences or downtime

Screenshot of the "new update" submission form.

You can use our rich editor to send messages, and include photos and videos if you wish.

Your updates will be emailed to your contributors and appear publicly on your Collective page. But you can click the “Private Update” box when drafting your message if you only want it to be visible to your contributors.

{% hint style="info" %}
If you want to send updates directly through email, address your email to:

backers@COLLECTIVE_SLUG.opencollective.com

You need to replace COLLECTIVE_SLUG with the handle of your Collective which you set on your profile info (For example, backers@webpack.opencollective.com)

{% endhint %}

Do you want to contact your contributors in a different way? Learn how to export a list of your contributors emails in the exporting your data section.

Your contact button#

Users can contact your Collective, Fiscal Host, or Organization directly by scrolling down to the bottom of your Collective page and clicking the “Contact Collective” button or via the “Actions” button in the top right of your Collective page. Collective admins will be notified when a message is sent.

If you wish to share a contact weblink elsewhere, you can use https://opencollective.com/COLLECTIVE\_SLUG/contact, replacing COLLECTIVE_SLUG with your own Collective handle (For example, https://opencollective.com/webpack/contact)

If you'd like for us to disable this feature, contact us.