Glad that this exists—I was worried about the lack of fiscal sponsors/ops-support orgs available in the EA ecosystem post-FTX crash.
Sorry if this is a dumb question but: why are two of the three people working on this project (Sparkwell) also working on a different but very similar project (ImpactOps)? (e.g. why would someone approach one org over another?). Thanks
To add on to what Josh said: It’s currently myself (Andrew) and Jeffrey who are running SparkWell day-to-day. While I co-founded Impact Ops, I no longer work there.
Josh works at Impact Ops, and also advises SparkWell. However, he doesn’t work for SparkWell or on the program day-to-day.
As for the differences between the orgs:
SparkWell provides fiscal sponsorship, and associated operational and financial services — as well as monthly check-ins, supplementary advisory support, and more. All of this is covered by the 7% service fee.
Impact Ops doesn’t provide fiscal sponsorship. It’s an operations agency, which provides consultancy and hands-on support across a range of nonprofit functions (incl. finance, recruitment, and entity setup).
Given Impact Ops’s experience with managing finances for nonprofits, SparkWell outsources accountancy and bookkeeping etc. to Impact Ops. Appreciate this can be a little confusing! But the headline is that these are separate organizations run by different people, offering different sets of services.
Impact Ops has been providing and will continue to provide operational support to Anti Entropy and Sparkwell, hence the involvement of Impact Ops team members both publicly and behind the scenes.
Via the SparkWell program, AntiEntropy is offering fiscal sponsorship to early stage organisations, this is not something Impact Ops provides.
To answer your second question more directly, a project would approach SparkWell if they are looking for mentoring and temporary fiscal sponsorship to test their idea before launching a new entity. Whereas a project would approach Impact Ops if they have already decided to launch a new entity and need support doing so, or if they already have an entity and require outsourced support from one of the 6 service areas that Impact Ops provides.
Commenting to note that Ashgro is another fiscal sponsorship and ops-support org that’s been operating post-FTX as well that focuses on AI safety and adjacent projects.
Glad that this exists—I was worried about the lack of fiscal sponsors/ops-support orgs available in the EA ecosystem post-FTX crash.
Sorry if this is a dumb question but: why are two of the three people working on this project (Sparkwell) also working on a different but very similar project (ImpactOps)? (e.g. why would someone approach one org over another?). Thanks
Thanks Kaleem!
To add on to what Josh said: It’s currently myself (Andrew) and Jeffrey who are running SparkWell day-to-day. While I co-founded Impact Ops, I no longer work there.
Josh works at Impact Ops, and also advises SparkWell. However, he doesn’t work for SparkWell or on the program day-to-day.
As for the differences between the orgs:
SparkWell provides fiscal sponsorship, and associated operational and financial services — as well as monthly check-ins, supplementary advisory support, and more. All of this is covered by the 7% service fee.
Impact Ops doesn’t provide fiscal sponsorship. It’s an operations agency, which provides consultancy and hands-on support across a range of nonprofit functions (incl. finance, recruitment, and entity setup).
Given Impact Ops’s experience with managing finances for nonprofits, SparkWell outsources accountancy and bookkeeping etc. to Impact Ops. Appreciate this can be a little confusing! But the headline is that these are separate organizations run by different people, offering different sets of services.
Hi Kaleem,
Impact Ops has been providing and will continue to provide operational support to Anti Entropy and Sparkwell, hence the involvement of Impact Ops team members both publicly and behind the scenes.
Via the SparkWell program, AntiEntropy is offering fiscal sponsorship to early stage organisations, this is not something Impact Ops provides.
To answer your second question more directly, a project would approach SparkWell if they are looking for mentoring and temporary fiscal sponsorship to test their idea before launching a new entity. Whereas a project would approach Impact Ops if they have already decided to launch a new entity and need support doing so, or if they already have an entity and require outsourced support from one of the 6 service areas that Impact Ops provides.
Impact Ops just posted a 2 year reflection piece on the lessons learned from the first 2 years of serving high impact non-profits which might help clarify the differentiation between Impact Ops and SparkWell- https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NWTEuaMDiGhcJQvLZ/lessons-learned-from-two-years-supporting-high-impact
Commenting to note that Ashgro is another fiscal sponsorship and ops-support org that’s been operating post-FTX as well that focuses on AI safety and adjacent projects.