DOERS Now Housed at the Open Education Association

The DOERS Collaborative has selected the Open Education Association to serve as its fiscal sponsor and long-term organizational home. As of July 2026, DOERS will begin operating as an independent program of the association, receiving legal, accounting, and administrative support while continuing under its own name, mission, and member-driven leadership.

Founded in 2018, DOERS is a collaborative of public higher education systems and statewide and provincewide organizations working to scale and sustain free, customizable open educational resources (OER). Today it includes 47 systems and initiatives serving more than 11 million students at over 1,400 colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada. Its members share research, shape policy, and build tools that help systems put OER into practice.

As the collaborative has grown, so has its need for durable organizational infrastructure. Fiscal sponsorship is a common model in the nonprofit sector that allows one organization to operate within the legal and tax structure of another. DOERS leadership conducted an open search for a fiscal sponsor and concluded that the association was the best-aligned option. The arrangement provides support for core functions like grant management, contracting, and operations, while enabling DOERS to focus on its members, working groups, and programming.  

"Our strength has always come from the leadership, generosity, and collaboration of our members," said Dr. Debbie Baker, DOERS Chair. "Becoming a program of the Open Education Association gives us a stronger foundation for that work while preserving the member-driven spirit that has made DOERS so valuable."

The Open Education Association was founded in 2025 to deepen coordination and collaboration across the open education field. DOERS members were among those who helped shape the association during its development, and this new relationship strengthens the work of both organizations.

"DOERS has spent nearly a decade demonstrating what open education can accomplish at the scale of systems, states, and provinces," said Nicole Allen, Open Education Association Board President. "We're glad to provide organizational support that enables DOERS to keep doing what it does best."

More about DOERS and its work is available at doers3.org.