The Stigma Against Fiscal Sponsorship Needs To End
Hi everyone. Sunday was Father's Day, so I spent all day with my two kids, 4-year-old Viet and 1-year-old Kiet, to remind me of the reason I do this work every day. And that reason is---I have to earn money to pay for the exorbitant childcare. Just kidding. (Kind of). I pulled them around the neighborhood on a little red wagon. We picked strawberries and raspberries and played hide-and-seek and read books about bunnies and little blue trucks. It was an amazing day, and it made me grateful for the wonderful community we're building together as a sector.
All of that to say, I didn't write a blog post today. However, I wrote a post earlier this week, published on my organization's
blog, which publishes weekly on Wednesday and has had several thought-provoking posts on a variety of topics, written the team. As we do the work, we want to share lessons learned from the challenges and successes in working to develop the power of communities of color and the organizations led by them. If you like the stuff on NAF, you'll likely enjoy the content on the RVC blog.
Except from the post:
"The more reasonable and understanding of us, though, may suggest that they do some due diligence, possibly looking to be fiscally sponsored by another nonprofit instead of forming their own.
"This makes a lot of sense. However, the concept of fiscal sponsorship is somehow unpalatable in many parts of our sector. It’s as if you’re not a 'real' nonprofit unless you have 501c status. My organization until recently was fiscally sponsored, so we know how it feels. You feel like a kid trying to get a seat at the adult table. Like Pinocchio, you’re not a 'real boy' if you’re fiscally sponsored!" [
Read further]
Support the maintenance of this website by buying NWB (Now NAF) t-shirts and mugs and other stuff.
Make Mondays suck a little less. Get a notice each Monday morning when a new post arrives. Subscribe to NAF by scrolling to the top right of this page (maybe scroll down a little) and enter in your email address (If you’re on the phone, it may be at the bottom). Also, join the NAF Facebook community for daily hilarity.
Also, join Nonprofit Happy Hour, a peer support group on Facebook, and if you are an ED/CEO, join ED Happy Hour. These are great forums for when you have a problem and want to get advice from colleagues, or you just want to share pictures of unicorns. Check them out.
Donate, or give a grant, to Vu’s organization, Rainier Valley Corps, which has the mission of bringing more leaders of color into the nonprofit sector and getting diverse communities to work together to address systemic issues.
