Fiscal Sponsor Organizations

Hi Shava - Congrats to you and SPF on crossing the 100 project mark!

I’m curious to hear what others have to say, but in an ideal world, everyone is working on things that are interesting and fulfilling to them, and the work is spread relatively evenly, right?

But there are obviously real-world constraints that SPF and all other sponsors face — and there are an infinite number of ways to approach this.

Have you ever looked at organizing your projects based on the approximate amount of work they generate for your staff / how much attention they require? That’s probably where I would start.

I also know that some parks foundations in other cities group their projects by geography and assign out a different region to each liaison.

You could also combine those two — for example, if you had 15 really large/complex projects, maybe those get grouped together for one of your more experienced liaisons. Then, the other 90 get sorted regionally and assigned that way.

Whether or not any of this makes sense really depends on the make-up of your portfolio — have you all done any work looking at natural ways to categorize your projects for this purpose?

Great question, Shava! From my experience, individual backgrounds and interests, support needs, project missions, and revenues and costs analysis are the essential items helping to divide the portfolio across crucial support staff. I usually suggest building all those items into your portfolio management tool so it becomes easier to reflect on all the projects and the teams supporting them. And yes - as you grow different levels of staffing could be utilized to support more complex portfolios. I use the roles and responsibilities matrix to help visualize the day-to-day management and strategic responsibilities across the program &/or organization. This visual tool helps reflect and further optimize responsibility and accountability structures with portfolio scale and needs in mind.

@Asta Petkeviciute would you be open to sharing your portfolio management tool? Very curious how you’re managing this and how we can streamline our process.

@Amanda LaFleur Those tools are usually fiscal sponsor program specific, but I am happy to share the overall template. And happy to work with anyone who is intentionally building these tools for their organizational success.

We will have a Thursday session on this topic in June as I know it is an important aspect for all fiscal sponsors. So if anyone has a portfolio management tool, please reach out to me (asta@socialimpactcommons.org) ! I would love to ensure we show-case your work without showcasing the details!