Setting Goals and Tiers#

If you’re looking to raise money for your Collective, it’s a good idea to create incentives for your community to contribute to your cause.

There are two main ways to do this through the platform:

Showing your goals gives your community a sense of how much you’re looking to raise, and why. You can also show how close you are to reaching your target.

Navigate to your Collective's Dashboard > Settings > Goals

Creating tiers encourages your community to give a certain amount in exchange for certain rewards or acknowledgement. It also gives them a sense of what their donation can achieve.

Navigate to your Collective's Dashboard > Tiers

Goals#

You have two ways of setting goals on Open Collective.

You can set a goal balance, which shows how much you have raised so far toward a set total. You can also set a yearly budget goal, which sets a target amount you want to have in your account after operating costs.

These goals will be sent in your emails to contributors, and you can also choose to show them on your collective page.

You will also be asked to select a title for your goal, and a short description which explains what achieving your goal will mean for your collective and the people it is designed to help.

{% hint style="info" %}
You also have the option to change the way the progress bar is shown when your goal is displayed publicly.

Linear is an exact visual representation of how far you are towards your goal

Logarithm makes the progress bar look larger to incentivize contributions

Auto will switch from Logarithm to Linear when 30% of the goal target is reached

{% endhint %}

Tiers#

Tiers are a way of giving potential contributors a guide to what they should give and to encourage them to give more with rewards and targets.

You can set a large number of tiers or just a few, depending on your strategy and what you can support.

You can use tiers to:

Offer rewards to people who give a certain amount, such as merchandise or supporter status

Example of reward tiers that offers membership perks based on contribution level on the JHipster Open Collective profile.

Show people how much you need to achieve a certain task, such as purchasing supplies for a single beneficiary

Example of tier tied to a specific contribution goal on the Oxford Mutual Aid Open Collective profile.

Offer direct technical support or services in exchange for contributions

Example of an Open Source project that offers direct technical support in exchange for contributions on the Babel Open Collective profile.

Customizing your tiers#

You can create and edit tiers by navigating to your Collective’s Dashboard > Tiers.

First, choose whether you want to enable the default contribution tier. Ticking this box adds a default "Donation" tier that allows contributors to easily donate whatever amount they choose, either as a one-time or recurring contribution.

By clicking on the “Create Contribution Tier” button, you will be able to create a custom tier for your collective. You can do this multiple times.

As you set the options from the form, you will see a preview of your tier developing on the right side of the window.

You can create your tier using the following options. Many of these are optional. Remember to press the “create” button once you’re ready to publish.

Type: Is your tier a generic tier, or is it related to a membership, service, product or a donation?

• "Generic" is the default contribution type that shows all fields as customizable entries.
• "Membership" is a recurring contribution where contributors get a special status, such as a right to vote on decisions. Project collectives do not see Membership in the type picker.
• "Service" means donors get a service in return.
• "Product" is where donors get a gift or item.
• "Donation" is a simple contribution to the cause.

{% hint style="info" %}
Fiscal hosts may disable certain tier types for hosted collectives. If a type is missing from the dropdown, contact your fiscal host. For events, when ticket tiers are disabled, the Tickets section shows a message and hides Create Ticket.
{% endhint %}

{% hint style="success" %}
If in doubt, use the "Generic" tier.
{% endhint %}

Name: Describe the tier clearly. You could describe what status the contributor would receive (“Gold Sponsor”) or what that donation would achieve (“Family Groceries”)

Description: Share more information about the purpose of the tier. You can talk about what rewards contributors would receive, or what the donation would help you achieve.

Interval: Set the frequency of the contribution. This can be one-off, monthly, yearly, or flexible.

Amount type: Fix the donation amount as a set figure, or make it flexible so the contributor can set it themselves.

Amount: If your tier asks for a fixed amount, write it here. If the amount is flexible, you can add a suggested amount as well as a minimum.

Available quantity: You can limit the amount of people that can contribute to each tier. This is useful for special edition items or one-time events etc.

Button text: You can add your own text for the tier button to make it more compelling. Such as donate, join, contribute. You can also add emojis if you wish.

Goal: You can set a goal target for each tier to encourage donations.

Standalone page: You can set up a separate page for your tier where you can explain more about what you’re trying to achieve and how contributors are making a difference. This will also enable you to generate a direct link.

Editing and deleting tiers#

If you wish to edit the details of your tiers, navigate to your Collective's Dashboard > Tiers. Find the desired tier and click “edit tier”. Once you’ve made your changes, click “save” and the new version will go live.

To delete your tier entirely, click the “delete” button at the bottom of the form.

{% hint style="info" %}
Deleting a tier does not cancel the contributions of people that signed up to it. However, instead of being listed as supporters of that tier, they will be listed as “custom contributions”.

Recurring contributions will only stop when the contributor cancels it, when an admin opts to "reject" the donation, or when the Collective is archived.

See Making a Recurring Payment for details on canceling.
{% endhint %}