Fiscal sponsorship is a term that is not well understood within the nonprofit world. A "fiscal sponsor" is widely, and mistakenly, called "fiscal agent," which misstates the relationship between a tax-exempt organization and any separate non-exempt project that comes under its aegis.
Four leading San Francisco fiscal sponsors in the arts and human services (Intersection for the Arts, the San Francisco Study Center, Film Arts Foundation and California Lawyers for the Arts) began meeting in 1991 to collect and share information on sponsorship practices to clarify their legal underpinnings and improve their effectiveness. The meetings and the production of this book were supported by The San Francisco Foundation and The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation.
Fiscal sponsorship is an ideal way for nonprofits to operate in the 1990s. It saves money, conserves resources, reduces duplication of personnel, simplifies organizational needs and offers other benefits to service-minded community groups. Nonprofits should utilize fiscal sponsorship to increase service capacity. Foundations should support fiscal sponsorship to stretch their grantmaking, and public agencies should consider it as an efficient way to contract out services.
