For more than a decade, we’ve worked with fiscally sponsored project leaders. And while every project and situation is unique, many of the questions, issues and challenges that project leaders tend to face are usually similar:
- What “should” our relationship with our fiscal sponsor look like?
- How much input should our sponsor have on our activities and decision-making?
- Where’s the line when it comes to what we (the project) are responsible for vs. what responsibilities should fall to our sponsor?
- When is the right time to separate from our sponsor?
After helping projects work through these questions again and again, I decided to take the collective knowledge of my firm (along with some great sector partners) and put it all into Making the Most of Fiscal Sponsorship, an online course from Schulman Consulting.
So, what is this all about?
Model A fiscal sponsorship can be a wonderful tool. You can get a lot of the benefits of a 501(c)(3) nonprofit without going through the rigmarole of applying to the IRS and then needing to run a complicated small business.
But, being under fiscal sponsorship is different from being a standalone nonprofit organization, often in significant ways:
- You have to develop a relationship with your sponsor and build mutual trust,
- You need to understand where your sponsor’s boundaries are…and consider your options if things go off the rails,
- You need to have a sixth sense when something happens you didn’t expect…know what to do with the nagging feeling of “is this how it’s supposed to be?”
No one tells you any of that when you get started…you have to figure it out on your own, as you go.
But what if you could get a handle on the dynamics at play, better understand how roles and responsibilities are split, and have a better sense of what “industry standards” are? What if you could determine, once and for all, whether your project should stay under fiscal sponsorship or separate and go out on its own?
What if there was a way to learn the ins and outs of fiscal sponsorship designed specifically for sponsored projects?
Well, now there is.
We call it, “Making the Most of Fiscal Sponsorship.”
This course will give you a foundational understanding of how to successfully navigate Model A sponsorship – no matter if your project has been operating for years, or just launched yesterday. This is the Model A Operating Manual you didn’t receive when you first started at your fiscal sponsor. If you’ve ever been unsure about how to approach a particular issue or situation, this course will provide you with the ins and outs of the key parts of the relationship, including: communications, fundraising, advisory committees/governance, financial management and HR. And that’s just the first module!
There are currently 12 lessons in total, and by purchasing now, you’ll have lifetime access to all future updates to the course materials.
Every month for the next year, you’ll receive an email with the full text of that month’s lesson, along with links to a video recap, that month’s workbook and some additional resources. Each lesson provides valuable, actionable material that you can’t find anywhere else – unless you hire our firm for thousands of dollars.
The full list of lessons is here, and our overall lesson plan currently includes:
- Module 1: Strengthening Your Operations Under Fiscal Sponsorship (5 lessons) with a focus on project-sponsor communication, fundraising, advisory committees, HR and more.
- Module 2: Assessing If and When Separation Is Right (4 lessons) with lessons on the rationales for spinning out and staying sponsored, the costs of independence, signs your project may be ready to exit and more.
- Module 3 Preparing for a Potential Spinout (3 lessons) covering transition planning/budgeting, legal requirements, the phases of spinning out and more, for those projects who may seek to spinout.
And if you’d like, you can view a sample lesson here (Lesson 6: The Case for Staying Sponsored).
So, if you’ve always wanted the manual for Model A sponsored project leaders, now you have it.
Register today and the first lesson on Project-Sponsor Communications will be in your inbox tomorrow!
Still have questions? Click here to review our FAQ where we answer some of the more common questions we’ve been getting.
