The OBC sources revenue from supporting institutions on behalf of its publisher and publishing service provider members, for which the members provide, in addition to open content, a variety of benefits, such as usage metrics, catalogue records, cross-referenced metadata, annual financial reports, shared governance, and so on. Institutions pay a small fee on top of the support they pledge to one or more membership programmes, which money is used for the operating expenses of the OBC. Publishers and publishing service providers give some of the money they receive from supporters back to the OBC for operating expenses and also for a collective development fund that has been established to provide financial assistance to members of the OBC to improve their operations, technical and otherwise.
The collective development fund is a highly unique aspect of the OBC and demonstrates the OBC members’ commitment to mutual aid and non-competitive collaboration. Monies in this fund will be distributed to publishers and publishing service providers who apply for micro-grants for various projects, and this money will also be used to create toolkits, manuals, workshops, and the like for assisting open access book ventures to learn about and implement the best practices and standards for open access book publishing expected by funders and larger research communities.