SPOTLIGHT: Community Initiatives, the first 25 years

Last month, I had the pleasure of participating in a video interview with other founders and past board members of Community Initiatives to celebrate the organization’s 25th anniversary. Serving on its board of directors for 10 years after its 1996 incorporation gave me the opportunity to go beyond giving clients occasional legal advice on specific sponsorship problems to helping to oversee the whole project management process. It was truly a laboratory for best practices, including intake and separation, policies and procedures, anticipating hazards, and staying in the black financially. Here’s more about the anniversary celebration from President and CEO Ruth Williams.
— Greg Colvin   MORE

NOT JUST A BLOG — A RESOURCE FOR FISCAL SPONSORS

Last year, our country faced overwhelming problems — a surging pandemic, joblessness and homelessness, racial inequities, interrupted educations, unprecedented natural disasters and so much more. Some of these have begun to resolve, but not all. 

I restarted this blog, launched in 2005, at year’s end, and I’m convinced that for solutions to our ongoing challenges, we need to look beyond the for-profit business model, existing government bureaucracies, and traditional tax-exempt nonprofit philanthropy, and opt instead for grassroots innovations like fiscal sponsorship — done right.

There’s never been a time with a greater need for people to rise up, organize themselves, imagine a better future, and assemble the resources to secure that future. One resource for new public interest projects is using the umbrella of dedicated, professional 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsors.

Projects can quickly qualify for tax-deductible donations and grants, sometimes even get started in a matter of days, not the months required to apply to and receive formal IRS approval on their own.

This site is here to help fiscal sponsors and projects considering fiscal sponsorship. It has useful tips, timely resources, alerts, news you can use from the field, archives of past posts and guest contributors.

Some posts are informed by the enormous, real-world progress of diverse, inspiring projects and sponsors. Other site contents are drawn from Study Center Press’ third edition of Fiscal Sponsorship: 6 Ways To Do It Right, which my Adler & Colvin colleague Stephanie Petit and I co-authored in 2019, completely revising and updating the 2005 second edition.

We’re gratified by the growing interest in the third edition and hope you find this blog a useful addition.