Fiscal Sponsor Organizations

I’m definitely curious what other folks have to say about this, but if you’re worried about having your org’s general account information floating around, could you open up a separate account just for incoming ACHs/wires? It would be a little more work on your part to transfer the money to your “main” account, but that way, if someone tried to make an unauthorized transfer out of the account, there would (theoretically) be a much smaller amount of money in that account as compared to the “main” account.

Our routing and account info are included in our policy handbook that we give to our projects. Do they look at that when they need the account info - no. We operating on empowering with information so they can feel autonomous. We haven’t seen any issue around risk but our bank (Chase) periodically calls us to verify wire, transactions and zelles.

We fill out the forms for ACH transfers, upon request, although I was concerned about having banking info out there. We have two-factor ID set up on the account, so no one could get in without a text coming to my phone. That is a really good idea to have a separate account for incoming ACH transfers.

Projects have access to our account and routing #s. We haven’t seen any big issues around this but it’s something to keep a close eye on.

I agree, projects have access to this information. We are seeing more fraud on our Bank of America account because fraudsters are setting up ACH payments using our account details. The routing and account number are on our printed checks so there is not a way to prevent that from being shared. Our only recourse is to set up Positive Pay with ACH, which we already had to set up for printed checks. It’s a burden on staff because positive pay needs attention even on days we may be closed, so someone still has to work that day to check Positive Pay. We can chat more if you want to dive deeper on this.