Inside Fiscal Sponsorships: Improving Transparency
Speaking of the IRS—in 2012, the IRS’s own Advisory Committee on Tax Exempt and Government Entities (ACT) published a report that recommended changes to the rules governing fiscal sponsorship. The…
fiscal sponsorship
Inside Fiscal Sponsorships: Obscuring Finances?
To illustrate some potentially problematic applications of the fiscal sponsorship concept, this report will look at some specific nonprofit organizations that are acting as sponsors on a scale that is…
Inside Fiscal Sponsorships: Incubation and the Tides Center
The above definitions emphasize fiscal sponsorship as a grassroots, community-level, activity. A different view of the concept comes into focus if one takes a top-down view of it, particularly considering…
Inside Fiscal Sponsorships: A Way to Start Nonprofits
In his celebrated book Democracy in America (1848), the French observer of the mid-19th century United States, Alexis de Tocqueville, praises Americans' aptitude for what he calls “the art of joining” with…
Some Suggestions for Improving the Form 990
Each year, tax-exempt, nonprofit organizations and foundations are required to file returns with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Most of these groups file Form 990, while § 501(c)(3) private foundations…
Unearthing the Tides Nexus: “Dark Money” Pioneer
The modern pass-through funding model dates back to the mid-1970s, when entrepreneurial political activist Drummond Pike created the Tides Foundation, launching the pass-through scheme that now dominates the nonprofit netherworld.
Unearthing the Tides Nexus: The Tides Nexus
Since the 1970s, Tides has become a brand that now encompasses eight distinct organizations, seven 501(c)(3) public charities and one 501(c)(4) advocacy group, collectively referred to as the Tides Nexus.
Unearthing the Tides Nexus: Incubation
While the Tides Foundation actually started incubating new groups in 1979, it spun off its fiscal sponsorship services into the Tides Center in 1996, possibly to insulate the main group…
Unearthing the Tides Nexus: Pushing Policy
Tides Advocacy combines the pass-through and incubation efforts of the Tides Foundation and Tides Center in order to service 501(c)(4) groups, which are allowed to spend significantly more on lobbying…
Fiscal Sponsorship, the Left, and Beginning to Explore Reform
Most people have never heard of one of the Left’s potent weapons—“fiscal sponsorship”—yet it’s the secret to the legion of liberal activist groups flooding American politics today.