Proposing 501c3 fiscal sponsorship for the Open Referral initiative
Greg Bloom
Hi folks – In this longish email, I'm excited to look ahead to the next chapter of Open Referral's institutional evolution.
Here’s the gist: I’m proposing that Open Referral become fiscally sponsored by Aspiration, a 501c3 organization that provides facilitation and capacity-building support to nonprofit technology initiatives.
I’ve hashed out this prospective partnership through dialogue with Aspiration’s executive director, Allen Gunn (whom some of you know as Gunner). He has agreed to bring this proposal to his board, while I share with this network for your consideration.
We’ll take some time for questions and discussion — here, in our Slack, directly to me, etc. Assuming we get rough consensus among the Open Referral network, and approval from Aspiration’s board, we’ll move on this in September.
Here's some background on this proposed partnership:
Open Referral has grown for years as an unincorporated project. This was intentional. Rather than establish a new organization that would need to be indefinitely maintained, we focused on building relationships and sharing knowledge across a network. I believe this has paid off in a big way: dozens of organizations and technologies are now adopting the Open Referral format to build tools and facilitate the exchange of interoperable resource data, and new operational models are emerging that can transform the sectors of health, human, and social services. We’ve accomplished all of this with a very modest amount of funding, maintaining our independence and agility.
Yet as our network grows — and with it the complexity of uses for Open Referral — we have need for formal institutional support.
I believe 501c3 fiscal sponsorship is an appropriate step at this point in time, for two primary reasons:
First, we have an increasing need to build capacity — i.e. fundraising — to undertake more complex parts of our puzzle. We have a good track record of helping various partner organizations raise funding for their own projects; however, we're now at a point where Open Referral will need established technical leadership and coordination capacity to continue evolving with the sector. For that, we should seek grants and other support from the various institutions that have an interest in seeing this problem solved in an open way.
Second, we also need to establish more formal mechanisms for stewardship of our intellectual property. Open Referral is and always will be open source, but 'open source' of course can mean many different things; in our case, we’ve adopted “Share-Alike” licenses that allow adaptations of our products yet require the preservation of open source licensing with them. In order to promote a balance between interoperability and innovation across our network, it will help to have a formal institutional mechanism that can anchor this licensing regime.
Given both of these objectives, fiscal sponsorship can ensure us a safe haven in which to evolve through this intermediate phase, from an ad hoc open network into whatever might come next – while allowing me others to focus on meeting the needs of members of our community, rather than dealing with payroll and insurance and etc.
So I’m very excited and grateful to have this offer from Aspiration. They are trusted allies to many open source technology projects, with strong relationships with non-profit funders and other leaders across these sectors. As both advisors and event facilitators, they have supported Open Referral's activities for years (as well as partners of ours, such as Code for America and various foundations). And they have a strong track record of nurturing open technology projects as a responsible fiscal sponsor (such as the Collaborative Knowledge Foundation and Idealware). Our values are very aligned, and Aspiration takes a hands-off, low-cost approach to their fiscal sponsees.
I’d be glad to answer any questions here, or you can reach out to discuss directly. Thanks again to all who’ve helped us make it this far!
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Greg Bloom
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