Solving the Puzzle of Feminist Fiscal Sponsorship

In this era of rising repression, major funding cuts and attacks on freedom of expression, it is especially critical for fiscal sponsors and social justice movements to be aligned in values.

Fiscal sponsorship is a vital mechanism for mission-driven projects to get access to infrastructure and operational capacity, and for funding and resources to move efficiently. 

But it can be a challenge to practice fiscal sponsorship in justice-driven and feminist ways – to successfully balance the requirements of fiscal sponsorship with feminist values and governance. In fact, a number of feminist funds have withdrawn from or scaled back fiscal sponsorship in the last few years because of the challenges.

Recognizing the need to “do better,” a small group of gender justice private funders, feminist intermediary funders, and fiscal sponsors, mostly based in the United States and operating globally, started convening in a peer-learning community in early 2025.

This group explored two central tensions that arose in these conversations – and what can be done to resolve them. First, the perceived misalignment between feminist values around autonomy and proximate decision-making, and comprehensive fiscal sponsorship’s requirements around legal liability and control. And second, the hidden costs of accompaniment, relational partnerships, and collective care that are prioritized in feminist practice but rarely articulated and almost never recovered from funders.

We need to resolve this thorny puzzle of feminist fiscal sponsorship – so that values-aligned fiscal sponsors can deliver operational excellence, truly serve as strategic partners, and make good on their promises to serve as enabling infrastructure. 

A space for learning and imagining

Our peer learning community was pulled together in response to this misalignment puzzle.

Feminist fiscal sponsorship does have a history. The Red Umbrella Fund, the first self-led global grantmaking fund for sex workers, was incubated and is sponsored by Mama Cash, a global feminist fund. This partnership went beyond back office infrastructure to also strengthen the capacity of sex workers to make grantmaking decisions and share governance, pioneered participatory grantmaking processes, and aligned organizational culture between both entities.

Meanwhile, Fenomenal Funds, a fiscally-sponsored philanthropic partnership, used feminist grantmaking practices, shared governance, and noncompetitive multi-year core funding to strengthen women’s funds.

However, in the past few years, several feminist funds have pulled back on fiscal sponsorship. Our peer group was initiated by a feminist intermediary that found itself in the middle of this conversation, talking with peer intermediaries, funders and fiscal sponsors. The group came together to tackle this misalignment puzzle from their diverse perspectives, to articulate the central tensions, workshop strategies to address them, and craft narratives for funders to support feminist fiscal sponsorship.

Although efforts have been made to define feminist fiscal sponsorship, a universally accepted definition does not exist. In this context, our peer community focused on the practice of feminist fiscal sponsorship, rather than the labels. The group acknowledged, up front, that restrictions do exist in financial and accounting requirements, and that robust compliance is critical for nonprofit projects to operate, especially in environments where political repression can take the form of weaponized audits. But there is a wide range of norms in how fiscal sponsorship is practiced and how these requirements are fulfilled.

The group tried to re-imagine how operations, structures, risk assessment, and capacity strengthening might look if their feminist grassroots movement partners and constituents were centered and prioritized. 

In addition, the group worked to think through best practices of care-based fiscal sponsorship, that would go beyond transactional “back office” support, towards fostering collective care and resource sharing, and using collective power to further justice and equity. 

Strategies to Tackle the Puzzle of Feminist Fiscal Sponsorship

The first topic we discussed was autonomy and control.

IRS regulations governing charitable contributions require that a fiscal sponsor in a comprehensive (Model A) partnership must exercise “complete control and discretion” over the funds received for a sponsored project. The fiscal sponsor is legally and fiscally responsible for ensuring that those funds are used in compliance with tax law.

In practice, this leads to a delicate balance between liability, risk assessment, due diligence and governance, alongside feminist values of trust, flexibility and autonomy. The fact is that traditional risk mitigation strategies often do not prioritize feminist values.

But there is an opportunity to define and implement more  values-driven approaches to informed risk tolerance. Recognizing that the practice of fiscal sponsorship often evolved from corporate practices that didn’t center social justice, feminist fiscal sponsors can intentionally pause to investigate whether the policies as practiced are actually necessary, legally required and culturally competent. 

The group suggested that sponsors could create spaces for ongoing and evolving risk assessment including participation from sponsored project partners; develop risk-sharing strategies between funders, fiscal sponsors and sponsored projects; and identify and work with values-aligned legal and finance counsel who can start with the mindset of “here’s how” rather than a “no.” 

The second topic we discussed was collective care. Feminist practice prioritizes relationships and care which can take more time and resources ; these are not always covered in traditional fiscal sponsorship arrangements, which can take a more transactional approach. Articulating and making them visible is the first step towards making the case for full coverage of true costs. 

These include the operational costs of values-aligned processes, additional flexibility to move funds to a range of grassroots entities, the costs of participatory governance, and the costs of educating funders. They also include the costs of care and accompaniment, relational customer service informed by culturally-competent conflict resolution approaches, and aligning diverse organizational cultures of the sponsor and sponsored projects, as well as the opportunity costs of complex sponsorship relationships and risk management. 

Recommendations for Action

The community articulated some recommendations to funders and to fiscal sponsors to bring the practice of fiscal sponsorship closer to the aspiration of feminist values. 

For fiscal sponsors, these might include:

• Transparency with projects: Clarity and transparency about legal requirements, openness to creativity with preserving autonomy of partners where possible, mechanisms for shared responsibility and common understandings of compliance requirements, and enabling operations and organizational cultures to evolve together.
• Data collection and visibility: Better collection of data – not just quantitative but also qualitative data – on the "level of effort" across functions to accurately estimate all costs, including care and feminist operations.
• Cost recovery conversations: Honest conversations about repricing and adjusting fees over time, and clarifying the process and costs of sunsetting and spinning off at the fiscal sponsorship relationship helps preserve relationships. 
• Narrative shifts: Collect and amplify the stories that demonstrate the impact of values-aligned feminist fiscal sponsorship and their infrastructure role.

For funders, these might include:

• True costs: Understanding both tangible costs such as HR, IT, and compliance, and the intangible costs of care, aligning organizational cultures and strategies, as well as the costs of sharing legal and other liabilities between funders and fiscal sponsors. This requires knowledge sharing on feminist risk mitigation and tolerance. 
• Learning and collaboration: Secondments and exchanges to help funders and peers better understand the role and value of fiscal sponsors as critical infrastructure and capacity strengtheners within the ecosystem.
• Support local and regional intermediaries: Supporting a tiered infrastructure with more actors equipped to receive and move money with greater grassroots proximity is crucial, especially in rapidly shifting political landscapes.
• Political will and informed risk tolerance: Effectively bringing fiscal sponsorship in line with feminist values requires political will and a more informed risk tolerance from funders as well as fiscal sponsor leadership and legal and finance counsel. Clearly demonstrated top-level commitment creates an enabling environment and joint accountability for adopting values-aligned approaches.

Entire feminist ecosystems can be better resourced and supported through strategies like these that bring funders, fiscal sponsors and grassroots movements into closer alignment