We should try to make sure there is some way for us to verify whether we are getting the funds given directly to numfocus. With opencollective we had direct access to see what was happening and there have been issues with finding funds that numfocus manages. But we may not have an option, given our dependence on numfocus for financial management.

@stefanv Do you have any thoughts on this?

How did we have direct access with opencollective? That is why I made this switch. thanks.dev donated to networkx via opencollective and numfocus had no indication or notification that the donation was earmarked to NetworkX. The donation did not go through the usual webbrowser interface to make the donation -- they use an api. And they ask for the opencollective url for networkx. The Numfocus person (Mir) I am working with on this said that she had to find it by searching for dollar amounts.

But if there is a way to have direct access to the opencollective activity perhaps we could figure out how to find these donations without manual intervention (me telling her the dollar amount and she looking for it).

I got an email on Tue, Mar 26, 12:58 PM saying that thanks.dev dontated $63.61 to NetworkX. I assumed that happened when the donation was made, but I guess NF initiated that email? I can see all the NetworkX transactions on OC, but I can't see all the NF transactions on OC.

If we move completely to NF, how do we see anything? Do they have a webinterface or is that part of the plan once they move away from OC? Maybe we should discuss this over the phone.

I don't think we are getting much new contributions, so I would like to hold off on making this change until I understand what is happening. Sorry I haven't made the recent developer meetings. I will be back in Berkeley Tuesday and will attend the next meeting. If we don't talk before then, I can get caught up then. I am marking this as a draft PR for now. If this turns out to be more pressing, go ahead and mark this as ready to merge and merge. (If we change our minds, we can undo it later.)

We haven't really talked about this in detail in the developer meetings.

The donations you see from thanks.dev appear on opencollective only after numfocus has found them and posted them to opencollective. They are initiated on opencollective on the thanks.dev end, but in a backend kind of way that apparently makes it very hard for numfocus to figure out that the money is intended for networkx. That $63.61 donations was completed weeks before but only showed on OC after I asked NF to track it down.

On OC, I see all the expenses that NetworkX has initiated. But I don't see donations (until I ask NF to track specific items). Why don't we occasionally see random small donations from users on OC? I think we're not seeing the donation side.

Marking this as a Draft PR is fine with me. Have a good trip!