1. What Type Of Activities Does CIF Accept For Sponsorship?
2. What Type Of Services Does CIF Provide To Its Sponsored Projects?
3. How Does An Organization Apply?
4. What Is CIF’s Relationship With The San Francisco Foundation?
5. Who Are The Individuals Involved With CIF?

We currently consider the following types of activities for sponsorship:

• Collaborative, Philanthropic Efforts Among Several Foundations

By housing such collaborative funding efforts with us, foundations can pool funds and jointly manage disbursements.

An example is the Foundation Consortium for School-Linked Services, a collaboration of twelve public and private funders in California. This project improves the well-being of at-risk children, youth, their families, and communities by influencing public policy and improving practice at the state, county, and local levels. Because the Foundation Consortium is a time-limited project and because none of the partners could provide the administrative structure for this multi-million dollar project, it sought a fiscal sponsor to allow it to manage the project collaboratively (rather than through one partner) and to minimize administrative costs.

• Community Efforts Responding To Crises And Urgent Calls To Action

Projects which arise under emergency and urgent conditions can be located with us, enabling them to begin charitable activities and provide receipts for charitable donations immediately, without waiting for the completion of incorporation documents or approval of tax exemption.

The Legal Community Against Violence (LCAV) is an example of a CIF-sponsored project of this type. Created in response to the assault weapon massacre that took the lives of eight people at 101 California Street on July 1, 1993, LCAV was established less than two weeks later to mobilize the legal community to work for gun violence prevention through public education, litigation, and advocacy.

• Projects Of Limited Duration

When located at CIF, temporary efforts can eliminate the costs and effort of establishing and then dismantling independent corporate status and accompanying administrative functions.

The Mayor’s Small Business Forum falls into this category. By affiliating with us, the project’s Advisory Committee was able to avoid all the regular costs associated with establishing a stand-alone nonprofit for an event with a life span of only a few months.

• New, Incubating Organizations

New efforts, where the long-term viability of the project is yet to be determined, may find that operating under a fiscal sponsor allows them to begin programs and services for a trial or incubation period prior to filing for independent incorporation. We also help connect incubating efforts to technical assistance providers in the community. Because the services CIF provides are predominately financial in nature, we feel that we are most helpful to incubating projects that have already made some progress towards securing funding.

A former music critic of the San Francisco Chronicle approached us about sponsoring a project that would provide reviews of Bay Area classical music events on the internet. We are helping San Francisco Classical Voice assess the long-term potential of this activity by giving it the opportunity to operate under our sponsorship. If the efforts are well-received the project intends to eventually become an independent organization.

We pride ourselves on providing prompt, attentive service to our sponsored projects. Typically a project contracts with CIF to provide a set of fiscal sponsorship services:

• Financial Services
  • Federal, state and local tax and informational returns
  • Receipt and acknowledgment of tax deductible donations and grants
  • Payroll tax remittance and filings
  • Monthly financial statements
  • Financial record-keeping
  • Independent Audit
  • Check processing and issuance for expenses, I-9s, 1099s
• Insurance
  • Directors’ and Officers Insurance for Advisory Board members
  • Workers’ Compensation
  • Volunteer lnsurance
  • General Liability
  • Umbrella
  • Commercial Automobile
• Human Resources Administration
  • Payroll processing, W-2s
  • Personnel policies in compliance with federal, state and local laws
  • Comprehensive benefits package
  • Benefits administration, 5500
  • Technical assistance on personnel issues
• Administration
  • Bulk rate postal permit
  • Resale permit
  • Sales tax reports

Ease of application and prompt response are priorities for us at CIF. Start by calling our office at (415) 733-8526. We can probably give you a good idea over the phone of whether CIF is an appropriate fiscal sponsor for you.

Groups interested in applying should submit:

1. Letter requesting fiscal sponsorship
2. Brief outline of proposed project (usually three to four pages)
3. Draft first year budget ($20,000 minimum)
   • including a line item expense for "fiscal sponsorship fee"
4. List of advisory committee members
   • minimum of three
   • majority must be uncompensated

Once you send in the above materials, your proposal is submitted to our Board of Directors for approval. In an emergency, we can make a decision within just a few days.

Our operating agreement is with the project’s Advisory Board.

Our usual fee is 10% of gross receipts plus 50% of the interest earned on funds on deposit.

We are an independently incorporated nonprofit organization. The San Francisco Foundation may appoint two of the five Directors on our Board, and our offices are located within the Foundation’s offices. Although the two organizations work closely together, there is no connection between Foundation grant-making and our fiscal sponsorship, and files of each organization are maintained separately.

Board Of Directors

John Kreidler, President

John currently serves as Executive Director of Cultural Initiatives Silicon Valley: a cultural funding and advocacy organization focused on improvements in public school creative education, increased citizen participation in cultural expression, and development of professional nonprofit cultural institutions. For the two decades prior to this new assignment, he worked for The San Francisco Foundation in the post of Senior Program Executive for the Arts and Humanities. In this position he managed a grant program that promoted the organizational development of nonprofit performing arts, visual arts, media, literary and humanities organizations. In 1995-96, he served as the Foundation’s Acting Director. Early in his career, John worked in Washington for the Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget, as an analyst of Federal employment and training programs. He holds an undergraduate degree in Political Science from U.C Berkeley, and a Masters Degree in Public Administration, also from Berkeley.

Gregory L. Colvin, Secretary

Greg is a principal in the San Francisco law firm Silk, Adler & Colvin, which specializes in nonprofit, tax-exempt law. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School where he served on the Board of Editors of the Yale Law Journal. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of San Francisco, Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management. He has written dozens of articles in Tax Notes and Taxation of Exempts, and is the author of Fiscal Sponsorship: 6 Ways To Do It Right, second edition published in 2005. He is co-author of Seize the Initiative and The Rules of the Game: An Election-Year Legal Guide for Nonprofit Organizations. He has presented numerous seminars on the IRS political and lobbying rules, fiscal sponsorship, and anonymous giving. He is currently Co-Chair of the Subcommittee on Political and Lobbying Organizations and Activities of the Exempt Organizations Committee of the Tax Section of the American Bar Association. He serves as general nonprofit counsel to Toastmasters International. The companion website to his book is www.fiscalsponsorship.com.

Jan Masaoka

Jan Masaoka, Founding President of CIF, is former Executive Director of CompassPoint Nonprofit Services, a strategy and development organization working with community nonprofits. Jan authored The Best of the Board Café (published by the Wilder Foundation) and she writes the Board Café, a national newsletter with more than 44,000 subscribers. Her research work includes recent studies on women executive directors of color, executive director tenure, all-volunteer organizations, and nonprofit space & occupancy needs. For the last six years she has been named by NonProfit Times as one of the “50 Most Influential People” in the nonprofit sector nationwide, and in 2002 she was named “Nonprofit Executive of the Year.” Jan’s community activities include serving as current Board President of the Asian Pacific Islander Wellness Center, and board member of the Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Email:Jan Masaoka

Francis Phillips

Frances Phillips is a senior program officer for the arts at the Walter and Elise Haas Fund in San Francisco, and director of the Creative Work Fund, which supports the development of new works by local artists. She co-edits the Grantmakers in the Arts’ READER and co-chaired the 2007 Grantmakers in the Arts conference, Taos Journey. She also serves on the board of the California Alliance for Arts Education. Prior to becoming a grantmaker, Phillips was executive director of Intersection for the Arts, a multi-disciplinary arts organization that served as a fiscal sponsor for some 40 projects. During her tenure at Intersection, she advised a fiscal sponsorship discussion among arts organizations and funders that, in part, led to Greg Colvin’s Fiscal Sponsorship: Six Ways to Do it Right.  Phillips is the author of three small press books of poetry and co-author of The Nonprofit Kit for Dummies. Email:Francis Phillips

John Murray

John is the CEO of Element98, a technology development and consulting firm. He is a member and immediate past president of San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Commission and a member of the board of Summer Search, a support organization for at-risk youth. He is a former member of the State Recreation and Park Commission and served on the City’s 2001 Elections Redistricting Task Force.

Executive Director

Melanie Beene

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