Grantmaking
Guidelines
Past Awards
Home
Prizes
Donor Advised
Fiscal Sponsor
Restitution Funds
Donate
Grassroots Fund
Rose Foundation  •   6008 College Ave. Suite 10  •   Oakland, CA  •   94618   •   (510) 658-0702

Fiscal Sponsorship: The Rose Model and List of Services

List of Sponsorship Services

Communication
• Assigns a regular daily contact person. (Karla James, Managing Director)
• Prepares Fiscal Sponsorship Agreement. Strongly urges networks seeking sponsorship to develop MOU and can assist in that if needed.

Training and Information
• As requested by the project or based on Rose's review of quarterly and annual reports, Rose will offer accounting, budgeting and/or administrative training. Referral as necessary to non-profit specialists.

Development
• Informal consultation on project focus, strategy and fundraising.

Cash Management & Accountability
• Budgets: Requires projects to have annual budgets and works with them as needed to produce them.
• Accountability to Project: Provides annual report to project based on Rose's annual audit/CPA review. Reconciles quarterly reports from projects with Rose's books ­ any discrepancies are flagged and collaboratively solved. Interim reports are typically available on request within 1-2 days.
• Fixed Assets: The projects generally hold their own assets. Rose can assist projects to develop balance sheets and other tracking mechanisms if needed. If Rose holds some portion of project assets, these are tracked and reported through Rose's regular accounting and audit mechanisms.
• Accounts payable: Rose makes lump sum grants to the project. The project uses its own internal A/P system. Rose can assist in setting this up if needed.
• Accounts Receivable: Rose processes all deposits from donors/funders, and provides notification to projects of funding received. Rose sends acknowledgements to donors/funders.

Regulatory Compliance
• Rose complies with all state and federal reporting requirements related to the receipt of donations and disbursements to the project.
• Depending on the project's legal status, it may be required to report the fiscal sponsorship grant income on the appropriate IRS and state tax forms (990, 1040, etc.). Projects are also responsible for their own payroll reporting.

Audit
• Rose's outside audit is conducted by Levy & Powers, CPA. Projects are shows as a line item in the audit. Our audit is available online on our financial page.

Grant Support
Proposal review: Reviews proposals for programmatic and legal consistency with fiscal sponsorship grant contract. Offers editorial and strategy assistance as requested.
• Grant support letter: Provides letter of support and additional documentation as needed for every application.
• Grant agreements:Executes fiscal sponsorship grant agreement with project. Executes grant agreements with funders as required.
• Grant reports due calendar:Encourages projects to maintain their own reporting calendar. Works with projects to document compliance with all funder requirements.
• Signatory responsibility: Signatory of grant agreements with funders as required by funder.
• Compliance: Works with projects to ensure grant compliance.

Grantmaking
• Within the parameters of donor restrictions, Rose can make awards or payments of project funds to other entities as directed by the project.

Contracts
• General: Provides advice and review on contracts as requested. Offers some templates.
• Signatory responsibility: No. Projects execute their own contracts.

Lobbying
• General: Provides advice on lobbying regulations and compliance, including identification and utilization of ³safe harbors.² If projects want to engage in significant lobbying, Rose provides specific educational materials outlining what is allowed, and disallowed, by c-3s.
• Permission: Advance permission is required to do any lobbying.
• Tracking: Requires projects to track and report lobbying activities and expenditures as part of overall reporting process. Will help design tracking systems as needed.

Copyrights & Trademarks
• Projects own all of their own intellectual property and copyrights.
• Can refer to attorneys who specialize in copyright/trademark law.

Bulk mail
• Projects may use Rose's bulk mail permit. Can provide training on bulk mail handling, as needed.

Employment
• Projects hire and supervise their own staff. Advice and resource referral are available on all personnel issues as needed.
• Referrals to payroll services, and health insurance and retirement plan providers that specialize in non-profit coverage are available.
• Projects are responsible for payroll taxes and filings for their staff.

Closure
• Rose works collaboratively with projects that are terminating or transitioning to independent 501(c)(3) status and offers both in-house resources and referrals.
• We use the Nolo Press ³How to Start a Non-profit² book as a guideline and checklist.

Overview of Rose's Sponsorship Model

The Rose Foundation has been providing fiscal sponsorship to selected projects for about 10 years. Typically, we have about 10-12 projects under sponsorship at any given time. By nature some are designed to be short term, while others have lasted for years. References are available.

Generally, Rose uses a pre-approved grant relationship with its sponsored projects. Essentially, this is a traditional grantor/grantee relationship. The project owns its own work products, and intellectual and tangible property. The project hires and supervises its own staff, and is responsible for the conduct of the project. The project is responsible for direct financial management. This requires each project to develop the capacity to take responsibility for its own administration, direction and destiny. Rose uses a strict fund accounting system. Each project is shown as a separate item on our annual audit, so it's easy to show funders where the projects lives in Rose's books.

The Rose Foundation's primary role is to act as the charitable umbrella. Our Board makes a finding that support of the project will further our own charitable purposes, and creates a special restricted fund for the sole purpose of funding the project's activities. Rose executes a grant agreement with the project specifying that all funds received by Rose will be granted to the project in accordance with the budget and proposal that was funded by the original funding source. Rose assumes liability to the funding source (typically executing a grant agreement with the funder) that the work will be substantially carried out as described in the grant application. Since the project is not a 501(c)(3), Rose assumes liability to the IRS for the charitable nature of the activities.

Rose's secondary role is that of consultant, coach and resource. For example, if a project needs help building a board or with strategic planning, Rose has extensive experience in these areas. If needed, Rose is ready to play a mentoring role in fundraising ­ we won't generate fundraising materials, but we will help develop a fundraising plan, including targeting foundations and editing draft proposals. Many projects need help setting up accounting procedures ­ Rose provides practical fiscal management advice that's geared to the size and scope of the project. Some networks and coalitions need to develop effective partnership structures ­ Rose can assists with the development of multi-agency MOUs and can offer models from other successful partnerships. At every step, Rose offers access to our network of specialist providers ­ we can refer to CPAs, development and management consultants, graphic specialists, retirement plans, insurance providers and other resource providers who specialize in meeting non-profits' needs.

All of these services are included in our basic fee of 6%.

Back to Fiscal Sponsorship Page

Back to Fiscal Sponsorship Q& A