In case anyone is looking for a bank recommendation, I would recommend Mercury, for their excellent UX and good pricing model. We use them for both Manifold the for-profit, and Manifold for Charity. They do provide ~5% yield to for-profits through Mercury Treasury (we use a different interest provider but if we could do it over again, we would definitely choose Mercury Treasury instead). Unfortunately, they don’t provide Treasury to nonprofits. Mercury can also do payments to intl accounts with a 1% FX exchange rate (worse than Wise, but Wise is kind of a PITA and kicked us off their platform :P). Referral link if interested: https://mercury.com/r/manifund
We do also have Stripe Opal for banking and other kinds of money movement, though that fits Manifold & Manifund because we do a significant amount of programmatic money movements—most EA orgs won’t need that.
I’ve also heard that Mercury has a great user experience, but as you mentioned, sadly, they’re not available for nonprofits. For a for-profit, your money market sweep goes to the Vanguard Treasury Money Market Fund, which is awesome: a reputable provider, $59bn under management, and 5.24% yield*. Mercury also offers a multi-bank sweep option, where you can put your balance across say 20 banks, so you get 20x the $250k FDIC limit in government protection.
If it weren’t for these “invincibility”** features, Mercury may well have failed when Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic failed. Mercury serves mostly startups, who tend to have large balances (over the $250k FDIC limit) and who know each other (and can spark bank runs through their dense networks). Worse, it’s not a bank, and there’s no stock prices or bond prices*** to watch to see when they’re in trouble.
* note that if you got the same yield via a certificate of deposit instead of a money market account, that’s materially worse, since you’re not insulated from bank failures, and may not be able to redeem if the bank becomes distressed
** not actually invincible
*** observable measures of distress are a double-edged sword: you know when the bank is in trouble, but everyone does, so small concerns can snowball into a real large concern
Thanks, really appreciated this post.
In case anyone is looking for a bank recommendation, I would recommend Mercury, for their excellent UX and good pricing model. We use them for both Manifold the for-profit, and Manifold for Charity. They do provide ~5% yield to for-profits through Mercury Treasury (we use a different interest provider but if we could do it over again, we would definitely choose Mercury Treasury instead). Unfortunately, they don’t provide Treasury to nonprofits. Mercury can also do payments to intl accounts with a 1% FX exchange rate (worse than Wise, but Wise is kind of a PITA and kicked us off their platform :P). Referral link if interested: https://mercury.com/r/manifund
We do also have Stripe Opal for banking and other kinds of money movement, though that fits Manifold & Manifund because we do a significant amount of programmatic money movements—most EA orgs won’t need that.
I’ve also heard that Mercury has a great user experience, but as you mentioned, sadly, they’re not available for nonprofits. For a for-profit, your money market sweep goes to the Vanguard Treasury Money Market Fund, which is awesome: a reputable provider, $59bn under management, and 5.24% yield*. Mercury also offers a multi-bank sweep option, where you can put your balance across say 20 banks, so you get 20x the $250k FDIC limit in government protection.
If it weren’t for these “invincibility”** features, Mercury may well have failed when Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic failed. Mercury serves mostly startups, who tend to have large balances (over the $250k FDIC limit) and who know each other (and can spark bank runs through their dense networks). Worse, it’s not a bank, and there’s no stock prices or bond prices*** to watch to see when they’re in trouble.
* note that if you got the same yield via a certificate of deposit instead of a money market account, that’s materially worse, since you’re not insulated from bank failures, and may not be able to redeem if the bank becomes distressed
** not actually invincible
*** observable measures of distress are a double-edged sword: you know when the bank is in trouble, but everyone does, so small concerns can snowball into a real large concern