The Equitable Intermediary Project

In the past five years, groups of people making up community-led initiatives, mutual-aid efforts, and leading work that grew from the Movement for Black Lives have approached the foundation seeking more mission-aligned ways to do business. Many such efforts are doing so with help from equity-focused intermediary organizations. Robert Sterling Clark Foundation is interested in finding and elevating the equity-focused work such intermediaries are doing, and making it available to the field.

Balanced between funders and communities, Equitable Intermediaries provide various forms of operational infrastructure including fiscal sponsorship services, administrative and back office support, HR, fiscal and legal guidance, capacity-strengthening including fundraising, governance, and strategic planning, and sector advocacy. They are sometimes thought of as “pass-through” organizations to their “sponsee” projects, but in truth, there is nothing passive about their work. 

Intermediary organizations are rather “access increasers.” They work with communities to navigate rules and jargon. They advocate to funders to reduce hurdles to access and support complex reporting on behalf of communities when such advocacy fails. They provide infrastructure to support individual practitioners, unincorporated groups, and small organizations, which all lack access to regulatory expertise and other protections enjoyed by better-resourced organizations. Equitable Intermediaries aim to increase access for communities to resources, and likewise to bring funders in closer proximity to the communities they wish to support. Like translators or interpreters, they facilitate communication and cultivate trust from funders and community groups alike. As credible messengers, Equitable Intermediaries can, over time, increase fluency among all parties and leave behind capacity and stronger relationships. In sum, Equitable Intermediaries are simultaneously doing the complex and difficult work of reducing harm to the sector while calling for systems change. 

Process for Exploration and Key Partners 

Our colleagues at Social Impact Commons assert that “The field of fiscal sponsorship stands at the threshold of a new era of growth and transformative potential for the nonprofit sector.” To capitalize on this moment, RSCF is working with a group of Equitable Intermediaries and funders who support them to bolster the field and leverage greater collective impact. 

The Equitable Intermediary Cohort is led by RVC, and held at the Movement Strategy Center. Members of the cohort include: Shunpike, IOBY, Sustainable Seattle, The Fund for the City of New York, ArtsPool, Fractured Atlas and the Center for Third World Organizing. The Equitable Intermediary Funders Cohort includes the Ford Foundation, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the California Endowment, The Gates Foundation and the Claniel Foundation.

Products

Our work was informed by this report by Change Elemental for the Ford Foundation. We have also compiled a list of articles and reports on philanthropy’s relationship with intermediary organizations.

Now What?

We anticipate that the Equitable Intermediary cohort will become its own self-governing network over the next two years. At the same time, we hope to attract additional funders to support this critical and often unseen work that the intermediaries do in support of our sector.

For more info, email Lisa.