Fiscal Sponsorship Commons
Incorporating the Resources of Fiscal Sponsor Hub
In collaboration with Schulman Consulting, Social Impact Commons, with generous lead support from the Mellon Foundation, is pleased to announce the commencement of a new initiative to build the Fiscal Sponsorship Commons, a community-steward online platform for resource sharing within the broader fiscal sponsorship community. Through this collaboration, Schulman Consulting is bringing the assets of the Fiscal Sponsor Hub and Fiscal Sponsor Conversations, which will be fully integrated into this new platform, bringing more unity, focus, and accessibility to knowledge and resources for our community and other adjacent stakeholders.
Joining Resources – Fiscal Sponsorship Commons is a project of Social Impact Commons, in collaboration with Schulman Consulting. Its first phase of work, to launch in early 2026, will combine under a separate website the current assets of both organizations:
- A unified Fiscal Sponsorship Conversations
- Digital library of tools, templates, and recordings
- Peer-to-peer networking and communications
- Public workshops and trainings
- Community job board
- Mentorship program
New Resources – Beyond the above consolidated resources, a series of new features will follow, including:
- A comprehensive wiki-style how-to on fiscal sponsorship
- A smart sponsor-project matchmaking tool
- Funder due diligence portal
- Field data warehouse and dashboards
Unified Membership – The above will be available under one paid membership structure, which will include membership in Impact Commons as well. While this new platform will focus on the needs of fiscal sponsors, it will also offer membership options for other key audiences including philanthropy, sponsored projects, and professional service providers.
Community Stewarded – The content of Fiscal Sponsorship Commons will be developed in collaboration with the community and be governed by a representative Advisory Committee, which will later develop into a more formal Stewardship Committee.
More information on the Fiscal Sponsorship Commons can be found in the FAQ below.
Fiscal Sponsorship Commons
FAQ
What is this?
In collaboration with Schulman Consulting, Social Impact Commons, with generous lead support from the Mellon Foundation, is launching a new initiative to build the Fiscal Sponsorship Commons, a community-stewarded online platform for resource sharing for the greater fiscal sponsorship community.
As part of the collaboration, the assets of the Fiscal Sponsor Hub and Fiscal Sponsor Conversations will be fully integrated into this new platform, bringing more unity, focus, and accessibility to knowledge and resources for our community and other adjacent stakeholders.
What are the resources of the Fiscal Sponsorship Commons?
By the first quarter of 2026, we intend to combine the current resources of Impact Commons and Fiscal Sponsor Hub, including:
- A unified Fiscal Sponsorship Conversations
- Digital library of tools, templates, and recordings
- Peer-to-peer networking and communications
- Public workshops and trainings
- Community job board
- Mentorship program
Beyond bringing together the other resources, we are working on the following new resources, pending successful additional fundraising:
- A comprehensive wiki-style how-to on fiscal sponsorship gathering patterns of healthy fiscal sponsorship practice across all operating areas and integrating tools, templates, and virtual trainings
- A smart sponsor-project matchmaking tool capable of helping to orient new projects to fiscal sponsorship and work through a decision engine to find matching sponsors
- Funder due diligence portal with key performance indicators for sponsors, grounded in Candid’s organizational data
- A data warehouse and field data dashboards on the trends and attributes of the fiscal sponsorship ecosystem, to replace the need for ongoing survey-based field scans
Why are we doing this?
As fiscal sponsorship continues to grow in response to the many challenges faced by our sector and civil society work, unifying our field and sharing its wealth of knowledge and resources is all the more urgent, in particular with sponsors themselves under attack. The goals of Fiscal Sponsorship Commons are to:
- Bring the field together – At this time of great challenge and opportunity for our field we need greater solidarity for our work.
- Streamline costs and accessibility for organizations in our field – We want to unify and lower costs and optimize time and access to resources.
- Collect and share knowledge – As the field grows we want to gather, lift up, and share the diversity of healthy practices at the foundation of our field.
- Build a bigger tent – In order for our field to continue to grow we need to gather more fiscal sponsors around the table and engage more deeply philanthropic organizations and other essential field-adjacent stakeholders.
Why this name?
We have chosen Fiscal Sponsorship as the foundation of the name, as we want to signal this to be a resource for the field, inclusive of other stakeholder groups essential to our growth and development. These include philanthropy, the many professional service providers that support sponsors and projects (law, accountancy, management consulting, and others), as well as peer nonprofit stakeholders, such as Candid and TechSoup. That said, the Fiscal Sponsorship Commons will always provide safe spaces for fiscal sponsor practitioners to convene and converse.
A commons is simply a resource that is shared by a defined but unbounded group of people to their mutual benefit. Commons resources are stewarded and in some cases, contributed by members of the group that benefits from them. The tools, templates, practices and other resources will be drawn from the fiscal sponsorship community and governed by a representative Stewardship Committee.
How does this change Impact Commons and Fiscal Sponsor Hub/Schulman Consulting?
Fiscal Sponsorship Commons will be a web platform that will combine the Fiscal Sponsor Hub and its resources with online resources of Impact Commons into a single member-based platform. Under its organization, Impact Commons will continue to provide direct advisory supports, Sage Intacct provisioning, research, advocacy and other functions, with Fiscal Sponsorship Commons as a new program. Schulman Consulting will likewise maintain its advisory services business independent of Impact Commons, while assuming an active collaborative role in building Fiscal Sponsorship Commons.
How will the resulting resources be stewarded?
The Fiscal Sponsorship Commons will be operated as a nonprofit program under Social Impact Commons and will be initially managed jointly by the Impact Commons and Schulman Consulting teams. The entire endeavor will be stewarded by an Advisory Committee that is representative of the community itself. (More information below.)
What does this mean for the Fiscal Sponsor Conversations and the Impact Commons Member Conversations?
Starting in January, these two conversation series will be unified, and will take place on most Tuesdays at 1pm ET/10am PT (when the Fiscal Sponsor Conversations sessions currently take place) with Oliver Hack continuing to play a meaningful role. In addition to this unified conversation series, we plan to host more-focused, small group conversations similar to what FS Hub and Social Impact Commons members have come to expect. Most likely, the majority of those will take place on Thursdays with exact times, dates and areas of focus to be determined.
What will the membership cost be?
The average individual participant is currently contributing at least $306 per year with organizational members contributing between $750 and $5,750 to belong to both Impact Commons and Fiscal Sponsor Hub. Considering the costs of other peer resource platforms and memberships, and in the interest of planning for long-term sustainability, we are currently projecting a gradual transition to the pricing structure below over the coming year. Membership will include access to the above online resources, as well as membership in Impact Commons.
| Individual Practitioners | $500/year |
| Organizations with Expenses* < $1M | $750/year |
| Organizations with Expenses $1M – $10M | $1,000/year |
| Organizations with Expenses $10M – $50M | $1,500/year |
| Organizations with Expenses > $50M | $2,500/year |
(*) Total organizational expenses for the last completed fiscal year. Membership will run from July 1 to June 30. New members may join on a rolling basis with dues prorated.
I’m a current member of Impact Commons or a paid subscriber of the Fiscal Sponsor Hub. Am I grandfathered in?
Between now and at least December 31, 2025, programming for Impact Commons and Fiscal Sponsor Hub will continue as is, with some degree of collaboration.
- All current Impact Commons Members are grandfathered in until July 1, 2026 when the new set of membership fees will apply.
- All Fiscal Sponsor Hub Full (paid) Members are grandfathered and will be invoiced within the quarter after their current membership expires.
- All Fiscal Sponsor Hub Associate (free) Members and (free) participants in Impact Commons Thursday’s sessions who are staff or volunteers at nonprofits will transition to have access to certain FREE resources under Fiscal Sponsorship Commons.
Is the National Network of Fiscal Sponsors involved in this?
Not at this time. We are interested in and open to conversations with NNFS about how its remaining membership can benefit from this project, as well as other modes of partnership.
How can I make sure my voice is heard throughout the process?
In the next few months we will be looking for field leaders to be involved in the Advisory Committee, and there will likely be opportunities for other, more informal involvement. We are happy to hear about your concerns, questions, and interest in this group. Feel free to reach out to info@socialimpactcommons.org anytime.
If you have any other questions, please reach out to us at hi@schulmanconsulting.com.
