I directionally agree with this, but think there’s an important distinction to be made between various models. On the one hand, you have a fiscal sponsorship-like model with some degree of operations support. On the other hand, you have an organization like GiveWell, where all funding is (as far as I know) centralized.
The former model is likely going to be easier for existing organizations to offer, but it lacks some of the advantages you mention in the post. Particularly, most fiscal sponsors expect a project to bring in its own funding (plus often a percentage for full-organization overhead). So that type of arrangement isn’t likely to address concerns about being a “contractor/grant recipient that has to worry about receiving future funding” or time spent fundraising very effectively. If the sponsoring organization is going to commit to paying the program staff whether or not the program can attract grants, that is a much higher level of commitment that will likely involve a significantly higher bar for acceptance.
I directionally agree with this, but think there’s an important distinction to be made between various models. On the one hand, you have a fiscal sponsorship-like model with some degree of operations support. On the other hand, you have an organization like GiveWell, where all funding is (as far as I know) centralized.
The former model is likely going to be easier for existing organizations to offer, but it lacks some of the advantages you mention in the post. Particularly, most fiscal sponsors expect a project to bring in its own funding (plus often a percentage for full-organization overhead). So that type of arrangement isn’t likely to address concerns about being a “contractor/grant recipient that has to worry about receiving future funding” or time spent fundraising very effectively. If the sponsoring organization is going to commit to paying the program staff whether or not the program can attract grants, that is a much higher level of commitment that will likely involve a significantly higher bar for acceptance.