Fiscal Sponsor Organizations

Hi Amanda - we also work with a lot of elder people working as volunteers, staff and contractors. We really love it as it tests our patience and time management! We have taken the approach of building empowerment but first we are charging them for start-up, set-up, comprehension, and the creation of manuals. We then hold trainings, create detailed manuals, and videos to support the various learning processes of the group. We are finding this effective and the project leads are enjoying taking over control while knowing we are there to guide and support when necessary (for a fee).

Happy to talk more!

Cheyanne

cheyanne@aha-projects.org

Our project-director base largely skews older, much in the way you describe. It has been a difficult balancing act to provide the kinds of services and transparency they want and expect without overwhelming them with new technology to learn. I’ve found partial success by trying to stick to what older folks have already been forced to learn - namely, google workspace functions. The downside is that it takes extra hand-holding to help people get logged in consistently and stay logged in, and prevent them from sharing proprietary information in insecure ways. We’ve been lucky to partner with service providers that have good technical support resources, as they provide a backstop when I just don’t have time to walk someone through a technical process.


Now to get them to consistently submit expenses through the payment request form rather than spamming my inbox with poorly organized invoices…

We have this challenge too. I’ll drop two notes here: 1) We’re trying to be more communicative with PDs in the application/selection process, sharing that as a fully remote (and lower touch) fiscal sponsor, most of the processes (hiring a contractor, hiring an employee, issuing a payment, getting a COI, etc) are all initiated online through our portal, so comfort and flexibility with tech is key.

2) We’re in the process (always!) of creating resources for our projects. Two tools have been helpful in this space: Loom (a cool video tool that can record a process) and Scribe (a visual workflow tool).