Mission

We bring communities together to share the resources needed to build a just and flourishing society.

We are building the first national network and community of practice advancing management commons as a model of equitable and inclusive resource sharing for the nonprofit sector—a next-generation approach to fiscal sponsorship.

Vision

Everyone with the will to create social good has access to the resources they need for their vision and purpose to flourish.

There is a management commons in every community, supporting people working to build a better world.

Who We Are

Social Impact Commons is the first capacity and field builder for the fiscal sponsorship/hosting ecosystem, with a focus on the U.S. and an international embrace. Founded in 2020, as a member-governed supporting organization, we provide whole-systems support to more than 100 fiscal sponsor organizations, philanthropies and field-adjacent allies, as well as steward a community of practice of about 700 individuals.

We work on two fronts. First, we build the capacity of fiscal sponsor organizations to support their communities of projects and that of philanthropy to be an effective partner to sponsors and projects. We accomplish this through providing whole-systems advisory support, tools, technologies, and other shared resources. Second, we lead the research and advocacy efforts for the field of fiscal sponsorship. This work includes collecting data on the field, conducting research, and building public understanding about fiscal sponsorship through earned media relations, publications, workshops, and direct advocacy initiatives.

Fiscal sponsorship is growing rapidly, largely in response to the increasing cadence of social, economic, and environmental crises that we face today. Sponsors can move resources quickly to front-line work, offer greater impact and operational efficiencies through shared infrastructure, and provide platforms for communities to come together around shared identities and values.

The field is also innovating and at a critical point of inflection, moving from a predominantly transactional approach to resource sharing to stewarding more transformational relationships with sponsored projects. Impact Commons sees the greatest potential for the field in re-imagining fiscal sponsorship as management commons, grounding its practice in commoning values: peer governance, intentional community building, and a commitment to ongoing learning and mutual care between sponsors and projects.

Fiscal sponsorship, and its next-generation practice of management commons, offer not only a path to greater sustainability and impact for charitable work, but also a transformative vision for the nonprofit sector as a whole—one that moves away from the orthodoxy of standalone nonprofit organizations, toward a vast landscape of shared infrastructure hubs as the dominant model for stewarding civil society work.