Community Initiatives

We are a community of initiatives all seeking to contribute or create public good. Fiscal sponsorship enables our projects to concentrate on pursuing their charitable purposes while we handle the financial, management and organizational issues and provide a secure, reliable mechanism for donors. Our current fiscally sponsored projects benefit arts and culture, education, environment, health, human services, public affairs, and social justice goals.

Greg Colvin, in his groundbreaking book Fiscal Sponsorship: 6 Ways To Do It Right, identified six ways to structure a fiscal sponsorship relationship. Community Initiatives is open to using any of these models, but has found, in practice, that three models have served our fiscally sponsored projects most usefully. The most common model (about 90 percent of our projects) is the Direct Project, or “Model A" relationship, in which the project and Community Initiatives are legally considered one and the same: Community Initiatives receives assets on behalf of, and incurs all liability for, the project. Please see descriptions of “Model A," “Model B," and “Model C" project sponsorships. Note: the nature of a project's fiscally sponsored relationship with Community Initiatives is determined at the time of acceptance by our Board of Directors. To learn more about the policies that govern these relationships, please see our Mutual Expectations.

Community Initiatives follows the Best Practices of the National Network of Fiscal Sponsors (NNFS). The NNFS promotes the understanding and professional practice of fiscal sponsorship. While models and missions differ, the organizations that comprise NNFS share common questions and aspirations to ensure responsible use of the tool of fiscal sponsorship.

Community Initiatives provides a wealth of core services to its fiscally sponsored projects. Our current services include:
Fiscal Sponsorship
Tax-exemption
Programmatic oversight (Model A)
Finance
Accounts payable
Cash receipts
Financial reporting and analysis
Budget and cash flow management
Audit and compliance reporting
Financial consulting
Grants/Government Grants
Administration
Billing and tracking
Accounting
Grants consulting
Fundraising
Online donations
Event software
Brainstorming
Human Resources
Administration
Full benefits
Payroll and taxes
HR consulting
Communications & Marketing
Social Media and communications consulting
Marketing consulting
Project Insurance
Meeting Space
Strategic Planning
Legal Review & Referral

While our mission didn't shift, President and CEO Melanie Beene and Director of Fiscally Sponsored Projects and Philanthropic Services Prudy Kohler both retired. In the early years, they carefully guided Community Initiatives' transition from The San Francisco Foundation to a completely independent organization. During their eight years leading the organization, they diversified the portfolio of projects and services, grew the revenues and staff, and helped the organization to become a respected leader in the sector. At the end of the calendar year, Frances Phillips retired from the board and passed the chair position to Ruth Williams, Regional Director-West Coast for Single Stop USA. Having worked closely with Ruth for the past two years, we knew the board and organization were in excellent hands.

Leadership change can be daunting, especially when it's long-serving leaders. The Board realized the challenges and engaged in a thoughtful and lengthy search process, culminating in the hiring of President & CEO, Theresa Fay-Bustillos who joined the organization 2014. The Board purposely selected a candidate who was well-rounded with extensive leadership experience in the non-profit, philanthropic, and for-profit sectors and who was also a lawyer with experience enforcing civil rights and handling general counsel duties for a non-profit and corporate foundation.

In 2014, CI embarked on a Board-led and staff supported strategic planning process, to carefully plan the next phase of Community Initiatives' history. We realigned core functions to increase efficiencies and improve the coordination of services to projects, resulting in staff promotions and new hires. And, we refined and expanded our service offerings to include, for example, strategic planning, increased legal review, and marketing.

After we completed the strategic plan, we hired Ruth Williams as President & CEO in 2017 to execute and operate our strategic plan. Ruth has a long and deep relationship with Community Initiatives - she served as Board member for 8 years and Chair for 2 years.

Our fiscally sponsored projects and their wide and varied achievements continue to inspire our work. All of them serve the public good—some with large impact, and some with smaller, albeit important outcomes. Staff and Board feel fortunate to support the work of such inspirational and tireless visionaries, making it difficult to highlight the work of a few in this report. Thus, we encourage you to visit our website to learn more about the work of projects in addressing the challenging issues of our time and follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook.