Apply for the non-profit/open source plan

We are happy to provide organizations that meet our criteria with a free Community plan!

We welcome applications for our Community plan from organizations that met certain criteria. Broadly, these fall into one of three categories:

  1. Non-profit organizations

  2. Open source projects

  3. Small education-related groups

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If you won't need to collaborate with others, then your needs should be covered by our free Personal plan! It allows you to publish content to the world 🌍 and even supports linking a custom domain to each of your spaces.

If you will need to collaborate with others, then please continue reading.

Our criteria

Criteria for all cases

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Your organization should not:

  • be a church, affiliated with one, or promote any specific religion.

  • be a school, college, university, etc. (but it can be a student group, lab group, course group, etc.).

  • be a government office, ministry, or function (but can be a small municipality local office).

  • be a private foundation.

  • have political affiliations.

  • promote a dogma.

  • promote a religious position as part of its activity.

  • promote discrimination of any kind, on the basis of gender (identity or expression), race, ethnicity, political or religious opinion, sexual orientation, or anything else.

Criteria for non-profit organizations

Your organization needs to:

  • Be a company with an official non-profit status.

  • Share a valid charitable status (501(c) or equivalent for your country).

Criteria for open source projects

Your Git repository must:

  • Exist publicly on GitHub or GitLab.

  • Not be an empty repository.

  • Not be a fork with no activity of its own.

  • Have a README.md file that clearly explains what the software is about.

  • Have a CONTRIBUTING.md file that explains how to contribute to the project.

  • Have a LICENSE file with a valid OSS licensearrow-up-right.

  • Have a CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md file.

  • Make it easy for others to contributearrow-up-right.

  • The organization must not represent a school, college, or university as a whole.

  • The organization may represent a small group related to a school, college, or university.

  • You may be a small student group or a teacher organizing a course for a small group of students.

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Individual students that want to keep your personal and course notes should use our free Personal plan. This plan provides unlimited private or public spaces at no cost, without needing to apply for the Community plan.

How to apply

  1. Sign up or sign in Start by signing uparrow-up-right for a GitBook account if you don't have one yet, or signing inarrow-up-right if you do.

  2. Choose an organization Decide which organization you would like the Community plan to be applied to. This could be one that you've already created, or you might want to create a new organization. (To create a new organization, click the switch organization toggle near the top of the sidebararrow-up-right, then click create an organization, and follow the prompts.)

  3. Get the organization URL In the sidebararrow-up-right, click on the name of the organization you chose in step 2. Copy or make a note of the URL in your browser. It will be in the format app.gitbook.com/o/[string]/home, where [string] will be a unique string of letters and numbers used to identify that organization.

  4. Send us an email Please send your application email to support@gitbook.comenvelope.

Your application email

Depending on which type of organization you are applying for, please follow the relevant steps listed below.

  • Briefly describe the purpose of your non-profit organization.

  • Share a link to your organization's public website.

  • Attach your non-profit organization's valid 501(c) or equivalent documentation for your country.

  • Include the link to your organization. Finding this link is described in step 3 of the section above.

It may take a couple of weeks for us to review your request and respond to you.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact our support team.

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