Fiscal sponsorship strategy
Path: /governance/fiscal-sponsor.md · v1.0 · 2026.05
This memo states why The Living Constitution needs a fiscal sponsor, which sponsors are appropriate, what the relationship looks like operationally, and a decision-by date for selecting one. The audience is the founder, the advisory board (once seated), and prospective funders who need to know the vehicle exists.
A funder cannot wire a grant to a personal portfolio site. The fiscal sponsor is the legal vehicle that makes the funding ask actionable.
What we need from a sponsor
- 501(c)(3) status so US foundation grants and tax-deductible individual donations are possible.
- Comfort with publicly-named-vendor research. The work names Amazon, Anthropic, and others. A sponsor that requires pre-approval of public statements is incompatible.
- Low operational overhead. Founder time spent on grant administration is founder time not spent on the work. 7–10% sponsor fee is acceptable; higher is not, unless services beyond fiscal sponsorship are genuinely included.
- Pass-through capability for restricted grants. Funder-restricted dollars must be traceable.
- Comfort with open licensing. Code is MIT; corpus is RRL-v1; paper is CC-BY. No sponsor that asks to restrict outputs.
- Willingness to support a founder stipend. Some sponsors have policies against compensating principals; we need one without that restriction or with explicit exceptions.
Candidate sponsors
Tier 1 — Best fit, contact in 30 days
Open Collective Foundation (OCF) / Open Source Collective (OSC). - 10% overhead. - Open-source-native, comfortable with public-facing project pages. - Pass-through restricted grants supported. - Will sponsor a founder stipend if funded by a grant explicitly designated for it. - Concern. Recent uncertainty in OCF's hosting model (the host wind-down in 2024 displaced many projects). Verify current state before signing.
The Astera Institute (via fiscal sponsorship for early-career AI safety researchers). - Has fiscal-sponsored independent AI-safety researchers before. - Active in the field; possible advisory bridge. - Higher overhead (12–15%). - Concern. Limited capacity; may not take new sponsorships.
Tier 2 — Plausible, contact in 60 days
The Better Internet Initiative. - Open-internet, public-interest focus. - Track record of fiscal-sponsoring projects with public-facing advocacy components. - Comfortable with named-vendor research. - Concern. AI safety is adjacent to but not the center of their portfolio.
Code for Science & Society. - Sponsors open-source scientific software projects. - Strong reproducibility culture (aligned). - 10% overhead. - Concern. Their model is software-first; the research-and-publication side may need a co-sponsor.
Tier 3 — Long shots, contact only if Tier 1 fails
A university-based center. Some universities will fiscally sponsor independent researchers; this typically requires an existing relationship. No relationship exists; not a near-term path.
A new 501(c)(3). Forming our own is technically possible but expensive ($500–$2,500 legal, 3–6 months filing) and adds organizational overhead. Not appropriate at the current scale.
Decision criteria, scored
| Criterion | Weight | OCF/OSC | Astera | TBII | CSS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overhead | 0.20 | 9 | 6 | 7 | 9 |
| AI-safety familiarity | 0.20 | 5 | 9 | 4 | 6 |
| Founder-stipend support | 0.15 | 9 | 7 | 6 | 7 |
| Vendor-research comfort | 0.15 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 7 |
| Open-licensing comfort | 0.10 | 10 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| Speed to onboarding | 0.10 | 9 | 4 | 6 | 6 |
| Capacity availability | 0.10 | 8 | 4 | 7 | 7 |
| Weighted score (out of 10) | 7.95 | 6.85 | 6.10 | 7.45 |
Lead candidate: OCF/OSC subject to verification of current hosting model. Backup: CSS as primary technical sponsor with a co-fiscal-sponsor relationship for the research outputs if needed.
Operational shape
Once a sponsor is selected:
- Project agreement drafted within 14 days. Covers scope, IP ownership (project retains all rights to outputs), founder stipend mechanism, and grant pass-through procedures.
- Funder-facing landing page at
/support/give.mdupdated to reference the sponsor, with the sponsor's tax ID and donation mechanics visible. - Restricted-grant procedures documented so a funder restricting dollars to (e.g.) the held-out corpus has a clean audit trail.
- Quarterly financial reports published at
/governance/finances.md. The Constitution does not have private finances.
What signing a sponsor does not mean
- It does not give the sponsor editorial control. Public statements remain the author's.
- It does not transfer IP. The project retains copyright on all outputs under the agreed licenses.
- It does not constrain the polemic. The sponsor underwrites the project; it does not endorse every line of homepage copy.
- It does not require the project to fundraise through the sponsor exclusively. Direct donations remain possible if a funder prefers.
If a candidate sponsor proposes terms that contradict any of the above, that proposal is grounds to switch candidates rather than to soften the terms.
Timeline
- Week 1–2: Contact OCF/OSC; verify hosting model; request introduction call.
- Week 3–4: Parallel contacts with Astera, TBII, CSS.
- Week 5–6: Comparative review with advisory board members (if any are seated by then) or with two trusted external reviewers.
- Week 7–8: Sign with chosen sponsor.
- Week 9: Public announcement; funder-facing pages updated.
Total: 9 weeks from initiation to operational. Funding asks pending sponsor selection are flagged as such on /support/funding-ask.md.