As the universe of interest in fiscal sponsorship expands, the independent media outlet Proximate has launched a series on the future of our sector. Proximate, a fiscally sponsored project of Movement Strategy Center since 2023, focuses on “news though the lens of money,” how it’s given away, invested and distributed by government.
I was asked in June to contribute some predictions to the series about what might happen next. My piece, “Fiscal Sponsorship Is Here to Stay,” starts by describing the invention of the term in the mid-1990s to overcome what John A. Edie had called “traps for the unwary” and the term “fiscal agent.”
The new fiscal sponsorship term was an attempt to identify best ways to manage groups of charitable projects by using models the IRS had already approved, and I was tapped in 1993 to expand on that idea by writing a book. Fiscal Sponsorship 6 Ways To Do It Right now is in its third, 2019 edition, available in print and eBook versions only from Study Center Press.
My Proximate piece includes my shorthand definition of fiscal sponsorship: “It is not one thing. And it is not new. It is a collection of the best ways that larger and well-established nonprofits can help smaller and newer groups serve the needs of our society today by gaining access to tax-exempt donations and grants.”
I predicted that the fiscal sponsor world will become stronger. Among the reasons: It’s “a free marketplace rewarding the best sponsors, the best projects, and the best professional managers,” allowing Americans to support projects, here or abroad, when government cutbacks strand them in times of need.
Also this: “Fiscal sponsorship has such a vast nonpartisan base in our society that any attempt to thwart its growth will be met by broad resistance grounded in the incredible force of American generosity.”
Read the rest of my predictions and those of the other four contributors to the series here.
Special thanks to Ben Wrobel, Proximate managing director, for the invitation to join this valuable nonprofit media outlet.