Hey! (full disclosure: I work within the Special Projects team at Rethink Priorities which also provides fiscal sponsorship services).
A couple of quick notes from me:
There are different models of fiscal sponsorship. I can recommend this overview from AntiEntropy and this to learn more about that. Different sponsors offer different models (depending on their infrastructure and risk appetite) although A and C are the most utilized and established.
Another thing that your question seems to imply is that these options—depending on how you define them - are mutually exclusive (which they are not) e.g. you can get fiscal sponsorship for tax-exemption and basic financial compliance but also “external” ops support. There are also ways to meaningfully combine incubation with fiscal sponsorship (which unfortunately I won’t be able to lay out here today).
Some funders require a project to have tax-exempt status (either via their own 501(c)3 or because they are fiscally sponsored by another 501(c)3). In those cases you’ll need fiscal sponsorship (beyond ops support) to receive a grant.
Hey! (full disclosure: I work within the Special Projects team at Rethink Priorities which also provides fiscal sponsorship services).
A couple of quick notes from me:
There are different models of fiscal sponsorship. I can recommend this overview from AntiEntropy and this to learn more about that. Different sponsors offer different models (depending on their infrastructure and risk appetite) although A and C are the most utilized and established.
Another thing that your question seems to imply is that these options—depending on how you define them - are mutually exclusive (which they are not) e.g. you can get fiscal sponsorship for tax-exemption and basic financial compliance but also “external” ops support. There are also ways to meaningfully combine incubation with fiscal sponsorship (which unfortunately I won’t be able to lay out here today).
Some funders require a project to have tax-exempt status (either via their own 501(c)3 or because they are fiscally sponsored by another 501(c)3). In those cases you’ll need fiscal sponsorship (beyond ops support) to receive a grant.
Thank you so much Cristina! Thank you for your insights, especially the point about the three options not being mutually exclusive.
I definitely didn’t think that you could combine incubation with fiscal sponsorship.
Having read this, does this mean it’s worthwhile to apply to as many incubators and/or fiscal sponsorships as we can?
(It does sound like we can do “external” ops support no matter what path we take.)
Thank you again for your help!