Fiscal Sponsors & The Question of Equity
The field of fiscal sponsorship, from its origins in the late 1950s and Civil Rights Movement, has had a strong grounding in equity, inclusion, diversity, and social justice. Like their close cousins, cooperatives, fiscal sponsors offer approaches to building and sharing resources among an intentional community. As tax-exempt organizations and cooperative-like business models, fiscal sponsors can offer an alternative economic and social structure to the alienating and disenfranchising forces of market-driven capitalism and the private sector.
The field of fiscal sponsorship, from its origins in the late 1950s and Civil Rights Movement, has had a strong grounding in equity, inclusion, diversity, and social justice. For example, Philadelphia’s Urban Affairs Coalition (UAC) was founded in 1969 by the city’s Black and Brown leaders in response to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968. It’s purpose: to build the strength, access, and the resources of Philly’s communities of color. Today, UAC serves a wide array of community, health, and human service missions, largely of, by, and for BIPOC communities.
In more recent years, Local Color was established to support the needs of artists and cultural organizations embedded within the diverse communities of San Jose, CA. Local Color offers an array of artist supports, including studio and workspace, and actively commissions and facilitates public art projects. Fiscal sponsorship has always been among the supports offered, but on a more informal and occasional basis. Over the past year, Local Color has been working with Social Impact Commons on developing a more robust and sustainable fiscal sponsorship program to complement its legacy programs and further support its community.
Fiscal sponsors, like their close cousins, cooperatives, are approaches to building and sharing resources among an intentional community. As tax-exempt organizations and cooperative-like business models, fiscal sponsors can offer an alternative economic and social structure to the alienating and disenfranchising forces of market-driven capitalism and the private sector.
Economic historian Jessica Gordon Nembhard maintains in her book, Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice, that in times of extreme social and economic disparity, marginalized communities reach for alternative economic models. This trend has marked the history of African American cooperatives in the U.S., which blossomed during the Jim Crow era, and are witnessing a renaissance today for frighteningly similar reasons. It may not be a coincidence that we are seeing increased interest in fiscal sponsorship as a means of combating current economic inequities and social injustice.
Despite this history, how is fiscal sponsorship sizing up today, in particular amidst the perfect storm of our country’s social justice reckoning and the Covid-19 pandemic?
Fiscal sponsors are tax-exempt 501(c)(3)s, and justifiably, nonprofits are under intense scrutiny today for their replication of many oppressive structures born of white corporate and management culture: top-down governance and management; favoring optimization and efficiency; Euro-centric concepts of “excellence” and “quality”; privileging of white workplace cultures and practices; and so on. Even fiscal sponsors of and for BIPOC communities are not immune to replicating negative structures inherited from the Western systems at the foundation of the nonprofit sector. A recent post by Vu Le in NonprofitAF discusses the “Highlander Syndrome”--how people of color can become complicit in perpetuating white supremacy.
So if fiscal sponsors are to chart a path toward equity, inclusion, diversity, and social justice, they need also to be agents of change for the sector as a whole and ask...
How do we practice equity in the design and development of everything from our management and governance to day-to-day practices, processes, and programs?
How can we foster a greater sense of intentional community and share power and authority with constituent program leaders and the people we serve?
How do we show up when things go wrong? Is our approach corrective/punitive or restorative?
How do we incorporate equity at the discernment stage with new projects? When selecting projects to join our community, does practicing equity mean intentionally welcoming certain projects and missions to the exclusion of others?
How do we balance compliance, shared risks and services with diverse needs of the communities we serve?
To provide a starting framework for thinking about many of these questions, Social Impact Commons has grounded its work in commoning. This is the act of stewarding shared resources that benefit a defined (but open) community. There are three core tenets of commoning, which relate broadly to fiscal sponsorship. These alone do not guarantee equitable practices, but they provide a foundation upon which equitable practices may be built and flourish.
Clear definition of the resources being shared and how they are shared.
Fostering social connectedness, intentional community, and ongoing learning.
Bottom-up, shared governance and authority over resources held in common.
Social Impact Commons has been tracking a few focus points (by no means definitive) that offer paths to implementation for the above general framework. These have surfaced in some of our conversations with fiscal sponsors about the practices or frames that can lead to greater inclusion and diversity, as well as equitable access to resources in the nonprofit space.
Accessibility - not just in the sense of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) related practices related to language and physical condition, for example, but designing to eliminate or reduce barriers related to cost, lack of knowledge, negative emotional states, over-expenditure of time, such as requiring lengthy applications, burdensome management processes, etc.
Empathy, Sympathy, & Affordance - not only engaging in active understanding and compassion for project leaders and staff, including trauma-informed practices, but also thinking about affordances--how the environment we create empowers our projects. Simply providing a resource or solution to someone who does not have the knowledge or experience to engage with the solution provides no benefit.
Listening & Responsive Communication - engaging in appreciative listening, dialogue, and active learning about the resources and systems that are being shared. One of the striking elements of the history of African-American cooperatives is how essential “learning circles” have been in keeping stakeholders actively engaged with the ideas behind the cooperative structure, not just allowing them to be passive beneficiaries.
Implicit Bias Awareness - building awareness for and processes to challenge implicit bias in its many and ever-changing forms, in particular considering the inherently oppressive aspects of traditional management practices.
Discernment - the delicate process of remaining open to new people and ideas entering our community while avoiding conventional or pre-defined assessment criteria (such as received concepts of “excellence” and “impact”). Especially today we are faced with the hard decision--much like funders--about who we accept to share resources that at any given time are finite.
As we think about measures of impact for fiscal sponsors, we invite our members and the broader community to share thinking and practices that promote greater equity, inclusion, diversity, and social justice.