Читать книгу Nonprofit Kit For Dummies - Stan Hutton, Beverly A. Browning - Страница 54

Here are some important points to keep in mind and negotiate if you decide to go the fiscal sponsor route:

 The mission of the fiscal sponsor must be in alignment with the project. In other words, if you have a project to provide free food to the homeless, don’t approach your local philharmonic orchestra as a potential sponsor. Find a nonprofit that has similar goals in its mission statement.

 The board of directors of the sponsoring organization should approve the sponsorship arrangements or delegate the responsibility to a key executive of the organization. The sponsoring organization’s board and leadership are, after all, ultimately responsible.

  Both parties should agree to and sign a contract or memorandum of understanding, detailing the responsibilities of each one. See File 2-2 at www.wiley.com/go/nonprofitkitfd6e for a sample fiscal sponsorship agreement.

 The fiscal sponsor customarily charges a fee for sponsoring a project. The fee is usually between 5 percent and 15 percent of the project’s annual revenues, depending on the services it provides to the project.

 Some fiscal sponsors provide additional services. These might include payroll services, bookkeeping, office space, group insurance coverage, and even management support, if needed. Be sure to ask whether these additional services are included in the fiscal sponsor’s fee.

 Contributions to the sponsored project should be written to the sponsor. Add a note instructing that they be used for the project.

Some foundations are reluctant to award grants to fiscally sponsored projects, even announcing in their guidelines that they won’t do it. One reason for this reluctance is their concern that the board of the sponsoring organization exercises less oversight toward fiscally sponsored projects than it does toward their agency’s other programs. Those foundations also may be concerned that the sponsoring nonprofit is providing convenient access to 501(c)(3) status to entities engaged in activities that don’t qualify for that tax status from the IRS. Not all foundations share these prohibitions, however. In fact, some are proponents of fiscal sponsorship as a way of supporting new ideas and timely programs. You can read much more about foundations and grant proposals in Chapters 17 and 18.