Open Source Justice Foundation. The Open Source Justice Foundation’s mission is to increase access to justice through the development and adoption of dispute resolution tools built with open-source technologies and protocols. Open-source tools can empower individuals and communities to resolve their own disputes peacefully and voluntarily without resort to state-run courts, and guided by their own norms and standards of acceptable social conduct. To advance its mission, the Foundation supports open-source contributors working on dispute resolution tools and complementary freedom technologies like Bitcoin, Nostr, and Fedimint. The Foundation is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt public charity.
The “Foundation Formation Kit” Project. The project’s goal is to develop and offer a kit of resources to turn any open-source project into a tax-exempt non-profit foundation. Forming non-profits and obtaining tax-exempt status with the IRS is a time-consuming and opaque process that usually requires the services of legal counsel. This is largely cost-prohibitive for small- to medium-sized open-source projects. The Foundation Formation Kit will provide all the forms and instructions necessary for open-source projects to form their own foundations and apply for tax-exempt status, without legal overhead. Once established as non-profits, open-source projects can obtain financial support or crowdfunding and avoid onerous tax liability for sharing that support with their contributors and community.
The tax-exempt foundation structure has previously been the exclusive privilege of large and well-capitalized open-source projects. The Foundation Formation Kit will give all open-source projects access to the benefits of this structure, regardless of size or means. A more formalized legal framework will accelerate and grow capital allocation into the open-source space. The Foundation Formation Kit will thus transform an ad-hoc and fragile industry into a robust, distributed ecosystem of nonprofits supporting open-source contributions and development.
- Github repository with editable form templates:
- Corporate Bylaws
- IRS 1023 Application
- Documentation with instructions on process and use of forms.
- Different tracks for open-source projects or local communities (e.g. Bitcoin or Nostr meetups).
- Interactive website with Foundation Formation Wizard
- Web-app to take necessary information and autogenerate the necessary documents and forms.
- Filing Fee Fund to cover fees for incorporating entity and IRS filings.
- Education/Seminars with project and community leaders.
- Add human-rights-specific track for instructions/forms
- Add additional jurisdictions.
- Integrate with partner platforms like Geyser and the Foundation supported nostr-native project, Fundsolvr
The following links can be used to download, print, and copy the OSJF redacted forms and templates:
This is a Next.js project bootstrapped with create-next-app.
First, run the development server:
npm run dev
# or
yarn dev
# or
pnpm dev
# or
bun devOpen http://localhost:3000 with your browser to see the result.
You can start editing the page by modifying app/page.tsx. The page auto-updates as you edit the file.
This project uses next/font to automatically optimize and load fonts.
To learn more about Next.js, take a look at the following resources:
- Next.js Documentation - learn about Next.js features and API.
- Learn Next.js - an interactive Next.js tutorial.
You can check out the Next.js GitHub repository - your feedback and contributions are welcome!
The easiest way to deploy your Next.js app is to use the Vercel Platform from the creators of Next.js.
Check out our Next.js deployment documentation for more details.