Open Collective is creating an easy way for groups of people to raise money and pay for things transparently.
Background
When I first heard about Open Collective, I thought "not another crowdfunding platform." There's already a number of those and it wasn't clear to me why another should exist. But after looking into Open Collective, there's a clear problem with Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and others: you don't see where the funds go once you fund the project. Open Collective seeks to make crowdfunding projects completely transparent and in doing so has the potential to help groups come together and get more projects funded.
Why would you want to use it?
The clear use-cases to me are open-source projects and meetups. Existing crowd-funding platforms do not serve these use cases and if you're raising money for an open-source project or meetup there's clear reasons that Open Collective could help your cause. As a funder, there's a growing list of projects already on there as well (see here)
