What can funders do to support more and better fiscal sponsorship?
Learn & Evolve:
- Orient your key staff and board to fiscal sponsorship structures and good practices.
- Develop fiscal sponsorship-compatible grants management systems and policies, for example:
- We make grants to fiscally sponsored projects.
- We require all sponsored projects to have a signed sponsorship agreement prior to application.
- Sponsorship agreements must clearly exhibit certain key terms before we approve a grant.
- We evaluate both the health of the sponsor and the capacity/program match of the project.
- In proposal evaluation, we weight the health of the sponsor X% and that of the project Y%.
- We require both project and sponsor to report on their respective KPIs at the end of the grant.
- Ensure that your key service providers (legal/CPA) and peer funders are familiar with fiscal sponsorship.
- Open your private communities (PSOs) to fiscal sponsors and other backbone organizations (they know a lot about the needs of the groups you care about!)
- Peel back the layers and ask fiscal sponsors and sponsees good questions to understand the nature of the relationship and affirm the parties are aligned on the structure and roles and responsibilities, i.e.:
- Do the key leaders have an established relationship of trust?
- How do both parties see their missions mutually supporting each other?
- Are costs, services, and basic operational terms clear and mutually understood?
- Fund the direct operations and provide capital support to fiscal sponsors.
- Invest in developing new fiscal sponsorship capacity in your grantee networks.
- Work strategically with sponsors on collaborative or cohort-based impact projects.
- Support the development of tools and best practices for fiscal sponsors.
