NPQ Publishes a Piece on Power, Protection, and Partnership by MSC Staffers
After months of research and conversation, Nonprofit Quarterly (NPQ) published “Equitable Intermediaries: Power, Protection, Partnership,” an essay by Frank Gargione and Andrea Granda, MSC’s Communications Director and Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer, respectively.
NPQ advances critical conversations that support and develop nonprofit, philanthropy, and social movement policies and practices. The piece introduces their audience, consisting of nonprofit leaders, grantees, and grassroots organizers, to the benefits of equitable fiscal sponsorship. Featuring quotes from MSC’s Executive Director Carla Dartis; BiNi Scoor, founder and CEO of 212 Catalysts; and JoJo Gaon, Executive Director of RVC Seattle, the article describes how intermediaries that work through an equity lens uplift their partners and projects with a transformational combination of power, protection, and partnership.
Power: Becoming Too Big to Fail
Gargione and Granda explain that an Equitable Intermediary (EI) can help groups grow and scale by providing grassroots organizations with the financial and compliance platforms required to receive institutional funding. This, Dartis says, can help even small and emerging programs become “too big to fail.” Other services that EIs provide that their traditional contemporaries do not include bridge loans, investments in communications and fundraising support, leadership development, coalition building, peer learning, and wellness support.
“Equitable fiscal sponsorship supports “long-term relationships that support reflection, collective impact, and collaboration.”
Protection: Safeguarding Mission in a Hostile Climate
While all fiscal sponsors absorb risk for their partners, EIs work to redistribute risk in a way that levels the playing field for all organizations: fees are allocated as a percentage of a project’s budget and often offered at a sliding scale to allow even small budget projects access. That said, as Gargione and Granda wrote, “in today’s hostile climate, where organizations working in social justice or diversity, equity, and inclusion face unprecedented scrutiny and threats, equitable intermediaries are ramping up their own compliance, legal, and security measures while developing strategies around crisis communications and targeted language.”
Partnership: Replacing Control with Collaboration
The writers explain that equitable fiscal sponsorship supports “long-term relationships that support reflection, collective impact, and collaboration.” Judith Le Blanc, executive director of Native Organizers Alliance and a board member of MSC, calls the relationships within an Equitable Intermediary ecosystem “a beautiful entry ramp for engagement and growing relationships with a cross-section of communities who are organizing and analyzing what is strategically necessary to create a world guided by the principles of social justice.” And Jose Pineda, executive director of After Incarceration, an MSC partner, says the relationship “replaces control with collaboration.”
“Equitable intermediaries are ramping up their own compliance, legal, and security measures while developing strategies around crisis communications and targeted language.”
The Equitable Intermediaries Cohort
The piece notes that RVC and arts intermediary Fractured Atlas are steering a cohort of equitable intermediaries that “seeks to increase equity within the nonprofit sector and beyond by shifting funding and resources from philanthropy to frontline communities.” MSC and 212 Catalysts are leading the cohort in launching a campaign designed to create awareness around the value of the Equitable Intermediary structure including attracting more funders to support this work at the intermediary level, sharing the roles intermediaries play, fostering relationships between funders and the grassroots, and promoting a wholesale shift toward more equitable practices throughout the industry.
Opening Doors
Gargione and Granda close the essay by declaring that EIs are “both a practical solution and a transformative vision” for “organizations working at the grassroots level, for funders seeking to support movement infrastructure, and for the nonprofit sector grappling with how to show up in this political moment.”
As Scott Simpson, organizer for MSC partner Qommittee for Qreative Freedom, declared, “an Equitable Intermediary doesn’t just open the door — they help you learn to build your own.”
