Fee schedule
One published, versioned schedule. The steward alone writes the numbers; repository administrators never set prices, and a request for bespoke pricing is answered by pointing at the governance process — propose a schedule change for everyone — never by a private deal.
Bands and lanes
The band is the payer's own consolidated-group revenue for the prior tax year — not a seat count, not a user count, and not anything about the software.
Illustrative Schedule v1 — annual, in USD, effective from 2026-09-01 · current. No figure here has been charged to anyone.
| Revenue band | Project | Portfolio | the Pass |
|---|---|---|---|
| $1M–10M (illustrative) | $100 | $200 | $250 |
| $10M–100M (illustrative) | $400 | $800 | $1,000 |
| $100M–1B (illustrative) | $2,000 | $4,000 | $5,000 |
| over $1B (illustrative) | $8,000 | $16,000 | $20,000 |
The launch order
The lanes ship in one published order, and the order is an argument rather than a roadmap: Project → the Pass → Portfolio. Project first because in the anchor era there is only one thing worth buying. The Pass second, when the registry makes "covers everything" mean something — early Project buyers upgrade automatically rather than being asked to buy twice. Portfolio last, built when the first organisation with five or more registered repositories asks for it.
1. Project
purchasable
Scope: one registered repository
The only lane purchasable at v0.
2. the Pass
not yet purchasable
Scope: every repository in the registry
Published in the schedule, not yet purchasable — the Pass ships when the registry makes "covers everything" mean something. Early Project buyers upgrade automatically.
3. Portfolio
not yet purchasable
Scope: every registered repository of one organisation
Flat regardless of repository count, so splitting a repository buys nothing. Built when the first organisation with five or more registered repositories asks.
The Donation Entitlement — a compliance lane, not a product
described, not yet operable For organisations whose policy forbids paying a licence fee but permits a charitable payment. Not yet operable: the direct-donation rail is an open decision. It is recorded in the registry on documented direct donation of the tier amount to a listed partner fund, it answers the coverage question exactly as a paid lane does, and no money passes through the pool — which is why it has no price of its own and never appears in the table above.
The Pass dominates at scale
An ordering rule, and a constitutional one for the schedule: no plausible stack of à-la-carte lanes may beat the Pass at scale. The single-lane options exist because "this one thing we use" is an easier procurement conversation in some rooms than "everything" — and the money routes to public benefit either way. If a future schedule version ever broke that ordering, the ordering wins and the numbers change.
Voluntary multipliers
An organisation that wants a creditable story pays a multiplier for it: 2× · 5× · 10×. Badge prominence scales with the multiplier — a larger multiplier earns a more prominent placement in the supporter listing and a stronger claim in the certificate's claim-language kit, and nothing else. It buys no governance weight, no seat, no influence over allocation, and no say in which projects are listed. The base fee earns no story at all: it earns compliance, which is what it is sold as. (Illustrative: no multiplier has been purchased.)
Buy the Project lane
Take the Project lane
One annual fee, one repository, recorded in the public registry. Purchase carries the amnesty covenants on purchase; every version published on or before the end of your paid term vests permanently.
Schedule v1. The payment provider is the merchant of record and the seller; the Association is registrar and witness, never a licensor and never a recipient of the licence grant. Bespoke pricing is not available from anyone: propose a schedule change for everyone instead.
Illustrative — no transaction has settled yet
The fee stack
Every deduction between what a payer pays and what a public-benefit fund receives. Percentages are illustrative until the first real transaction settles, at which point they are replaced by measured figures carried with the ledger row.
Illustrative fee stack — Schedule v1
| Deduction | Illustrative share | Who takes it |
|---|---|---|
| Merchant of record | ~5% + a fixed USD 0.50 (illustrative) | Payment provider acting as seller of record, including card fees and tax handling |
| Charity intermediary | 1–5% (illustrative) | The established intermediary that vets and disburses to cause funds |
| Operating levy | cap not yet set | Capped in the statutes, published, audited. The cap percentage is set with counsel before launch; no decided number is printed here until it is. |
| Currency drag | measured per transaction | Currency conversion drag on cross-border settlement, measured per transaction and reported with the ledger row rather than estimated once. |
End to end, on one illustrative fee
The same stack applied to a single fee from the published table, so the total is ours to state rather than someone else's to compute. Every figure in this walk is illustrative: the levy line uses a placeholder rate, and nothing here has been charged to anyone.
Illustrative end-to-end walk — $10M–100M band, Project lane, Schedule v1
| Step | Amount | Of the fee | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purpose Fee paid | USD 400.00 | 100% | $10M–100M band, Project lane, annual |
| Merchant of record (~5% + USD 0.50) | − USD 20.50 | 5.13% | Payment provider acting as seller of record: card fees, tax determination, remittance, refunds |
| Operating levy (10% placeholder — not a decision) | − USD 37.95 | 9.49% | Capped in the statutes, published, audited. The cap is set with counsel before launch; this line uses the sample placeholder rate so the arithmetic is complete |
| Charity intermediary (3% midpoint) | − USD 10.25 | 2.56% | The established intermediary that vets recipients and disburses to the category funds |
| Currency drag (~0.5%) | − USD 1.66 | 0.42% | Conversion on cross-border settlement. Measured per transaction and reported with the ledger row, never estimated once and reused |
| Reaches a category fund | USD 329.64 | 82.41% | What a published category fund receives, before the fund’s own programme costs |
About 82.41% of an illustrative $10M–100M-band Project fee reaches a category fund. That figure moves when the levy cap is set and when real settlement rates are measured, and it will move in public: the components above are published individually so a reader can recompute the total instead of trusting it.
The pledge, in its only wording: 100% of net proceeds after published, capped operating costs (cap: set with counsel before launch, audited).
The single end-to-end flow-through figure is published here as soon as the ops-cost cap is set with counsel and written into the statutes. Until then the components above are published individually and the total is stated as a range, not as a number we cannot yet stand behind.
The threshold, in plain English
Below the threshold, this licence behaves like a permissive one: nothing to pay, nothing to register, no account. The test is dual — both conditions must hold for an organisation to be below it, so failing either one puts you above it — and it is measured across the whole consolidated group:
- fewer than one hundred total people, counting employees and contractors together; and
- less than the published revenue figure — one million US dollars — in the prior tax year, measured across the consolidated group and converted at that year's average official exchange rate.
Group consolidation. "Consolidated group" uses the control language of the PolyForm Small Business licence, verbatim: direct or indirect control, by vote, by contract, or otherwise. A small subsidiary of a very large parent is inside the parent's group, which is the gap the group test exists to close — and the reason a fifty-person team inside a listed company is not below the threshold.
Indexing. The revenue figure is stated in US dollars on a 2026 base and indexed to consumer prices, so it does not silently tighten with inflation. Indexing is published, not discretionary: the same index, applied the same way, every year.
Crossing the threshold is not a violation on day one. There is a 60-day cure window from the moment you cross it, and the tick is one binding tick, timestamped once — a self-certification model with no audit right and no inspection clause. We ask you to be honest once, in writing, rather than reserving a right to inspect your books. There is nothing in this licence that lets us send you a questionnaire.
The operative wording is in the licence text — this section is an explanation and, where the two differ, the text wins.
Renewal, and what you keep
Entitlements are annual, and every lane behaves the same way. The rule that matters for procurement is the vesting formula, and it is one sentence:
A version is vested to you if and only if its publication date falls on or before the end of your paid term.
At activation that means the entire back catalogue plus everything published during the term. Renewal extends the term end, which vests the next term's releases. Vesting is permanent: nothing — project exit, delisting, steward failure, or a waiver revocation — can strip a vested version from a payer mid-deployment. If you stop renewing, you keep everything you vested and simply stop accruing new releases. Waivers vest by the same formula, with "term end" meaning the revocation or expiry date.
A lapsed entitlement has a 30-day grace window during which coverage answers
lapsed-in-grace rather than no, so a late invoice is not an
instant compliance incident. A chargeback is not a grace period: it suspends the
entitlement, and coverage answers no immediately.
Founding-cohort terms
The founding cohort is not a discount and not a sale. It is the set of payers and projects that join while the registry is small, and it carries exactly three terms:
- Automatic upgrade. A Project buyer from the founding cohort is moved to the Pass, at no additional charge for the remainder of their paid term, on the day the Pass opens.
- Band held for one renewal. Your band at first purchase is honoured for one renewal even if the schedule's figures rise, so a founding payer is never punished for having been early.
- Named in the registry, only if you ask. Public listing is opt-in for every payer, founding or not. An organisation that pays and says nothing is counted and not named.
The end condition is a fact, not a date: the founding cohort closes when the Pass opens for purchase, which happens when the registry carries enough claimed repositories for "covers everything" to be a true description. That is why there is no countdown here — we do not know the date, and inventing one to create pressure is exactly the behaviour this movement exists to be an alternative to.
Where the money goes
100% of net proceeds after published, capped operating costs (cap: set with counsel before launch, audited). The methodology and the fee stack above are the whole of it, and the Trust Center carries the documents as they come into existence. Every allocation lands in the append-only ledger.
Schedule versions
- Schedule v1 — current · effective from 2026-09-01 · every figure illustrative until ratified
Every version stays published at a permanent URL with its effective-date range once checkout opens; a schedule change never rewrites the version a payer bought under.