Fiscal Sponsor Vendor Recommendations

  • 1.  Anyone provide Office 365 or Google Suite for FS projects?

    Posted 03-25-2025 00:43

    I know this has been discussed in the past, but I’m wondering if anyone has found a way around the issue of providing accounts via Office 365 or Google Suite for their FS projects?

    How do you all handle if they ask for your EIN to sign up for these services? Do your projects sign up with your org’s EIN and take on this cost themselves? We already provide a webpage on our website to do their fundraising through our preferred platform, so the request for additional services through either Microsoft or Google platforms makes sense. We have been discussing if projects want to pay for this service, we could potentially take this on. However, it doesn’t seem like there is a way to provide this without taking on a new body of work (ex: who manages it if they have IT issues? Who manages the users who come on, need to be removed, etc.) Wondering what others do. Thanks in advance for your insight and/or experience share outs.



  • 2.  RE: Anyone provide Office 365 or Google Suite for FS projects?

    Posted 03-25-2025 02:23
    Hey @Shava Lawson - My firm currently works with one org on an ongoing basis on this and have helped a couple of others get this off the ground - all using Google.

    You are correct that this does add some more work (either internal or outsourced). I can’t speak to how Office works but Google Workspace is free for nonprofits so there’s no ongoing cost for the base service (which is pretty comprehensive) and the way we set it up, each project has their own siloed section of the GW instance and have at least one admin for their group. That means they can use their own domain for their email addresses and they have a person who can reset passwords, add/remove users, etc.

    All of that to say, it’s doable. But I think it really only makes sense for Model A projects…happy to chat with you (or share more here) if it’s helpful.


  • 3.  RE: Anyone provide Office 365 or Google Suite for FS projects?

    Posted 03-31-2025 16:48
    At ESI we use Microsoft. For our Model A projects, we ask them to also join our Microsoft tenant for security reasons and so that we can easily schedule meetings (shared calendars). We pass on the non-profit priced cost for the MSFT licenses with which they receive the full MSFT suite of offerings (excel, word, PPT, SharePoint, etc.). We do not provide webpages like you do Shava, but we do ask them to join our CRM tool, Donor Dock which gives them the donor button.


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