By providing administrative, human resource and financial management support for its fiscal sponsorship clients, TSNE gives them the freedom to focus staff time on meeting their program objectives. Here are more examples of how TSNE works with Fiscal Sponsorship Program clients.
Opening the doors of the State House to diverse leaders
Supporting and strengthening community-based groups addressing problems within the healthcare system
Ensuring that parents are truly involved with education policy and decision-making
The Commonwealth Seminar is providing access to government for people who have often been excluded or who haven't felt welcome in the corridors of power.
Commonwealth Seminar
The Commonwealth Seminar is opening the doors of the Massachusetts State House to diverse leaders: community leaders of color and those from immigrant and other underrepresented communities. The TSNE fiscally sponsorship client is preparing the next generation of policy-makers in the Commonwealth.
Opening the Doors to the Massachusetts State House
Joel Barrera, a Texas transplant, arrived in Massachusetts 10 years ago to work for a state senator and was stunned by the lack of diversity among the staffs of legislators He was one of only two nonwhites at a State House orientation for more than 40 new employees. “Texas is not exactly known for its progressive politics,” he quips. “But it is taken for granted that the government will be representative of the state's population.”
Fast forward a few years to 2003 and Barrera, teaming up with Massachusetts State Senator Jarrett Barrios, began to address this imbalance with the creation of the Commonwealth Seminar. Barrera and Barrios, himself one of a handful of legislators of color, envisioned a program that would increase the participation of communities of color and immigrant communities in the state legislative process.
The seminar provides in-depth legislative training, networking opportunities with top policy-makers, and access to public service jobs. The nonpartisan program is funded by the Boston Foundation, Herman and Frieda L. Miller Foundation, Access Strategies Fund, Foley Hoag Foundation and the Cabot Family Charitable Trust.
Effective Partnership
After a year working with a solid but small fiscal sponsor, the program began to seek a fiscal sponsor that was specifically set up to take care of the budget, reporting and other administrative work that supported the growing organization’s program initiatives. Grants Management Associates suggested Third Sector New England.
“TSNE was set up to do the work we needed done and fully embraced our mission,” says Barrera. “Using fiscal sponsorship allows us to focus on our core mission and not spend an overwhelming amount of time on administrative or compliance issues. It is a more efficient use of our resources.”
With TSNE dealing with “back office” issues, the Commonwealth Seminar can focus staffs’ energies on continuing to train hundreds of community leaders of color and from immigrant communities to emerge as sophisticated, effective advocates on behalf of their constituents.
"“TSNE’s role in making sure laws are followed, reports are submitted, and policies are administered, is critical to the overall credibility of the Commonwealth Seminar program and our long-term success,” states Barrera.
“We hope this will be an entry point for minority residents to run for office, work in legislative offices, and spearhead important legislative initiatives. The bottom line is that we want to throw open the doors of government to people who have often been excluded or who haven’t felt welcome in the corridors of power,“ Barrera said. “We want them to take the feeling that the State House belongs to them.”
Commonwealth Seminar Online Resources
The Commonwealth Seminar (MassCS) promotes public service through a free online resource, Commonwealth Jobs, which features job opportunities with government and nonprofit organizations. Every month, Commonwealth Jobs reaches thousands of diverse leaders and job seekers.
Employers are encouraged to use the website to reach out to communities of color and immigrant groups. There is no cost to post a job. Learn more at Commonwealth Jobs, MassCS.org.
 Working with local partners in Alexandria, Va, TAP provided data that strengthened their advocacy for increased access to healthcare.
The Access Project: Supporting Community-Based Groups
Mark Rukavina is the executive director of The Access Project (TAP), a client of TSNE’s Fiscal Sponsorship Program since 2002. TAP supports and strengthens community-based groups addressing problems within the healthcare system, especially systemic problems that affect vulnerable populations and their ability to access healthcare services.
The Access Project supports local healthcare initiatives with information, financial support, and training on policy analysis, leadership development and strategic planning. TAP’s support is critical in helping the local groups define the problems that affect their communities and build local networks with the power to change health care policy.
For example, TAP has increasingly focused on the growing problem of medical debt and its consequences. A TAP report released in February 2003, “The Consequences of Medical Debt: Evidence from Three Communities,” provides a detailed picture of the effects of medical debt on the economic and physical well-being of individual patients.
The study found that medical debt has a direct effect on the ability of people to access health care – more than half of the respondents (55%) described obstacles in accessing health care services as a result of owing money for medical care. One respondent reported that “Both hospitals say they won’t see me if I can’t pay a substantial portion of their bill…most of the time, I don’t go (to the doctor) because I know I can’t afford it.”
Medical debt can also severely diminish the overall financial security of patients and their families. Respondents said that they had been denied credit cards and bank loans. One in five reported having difficulty renting a house or apartment.
TAP Executive Director Mark Rukavina shared the study findings with the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations in his June 2004 testimony. He stressed that hospital practices around pricing, billing and collections are prominent among the causes of medical debt.
Coupled with its national advocacy, TAP’s local, community partnerships are working for change.
Increasing Program Effectiveness
Because TAP collaborates with groups throughout the United States, its work is funded from many sources. These multiple funding sources add complexity to TAP’s grant administration responsibilities, financial management, and its day-to-day infrastructure needs.
TAP had originally been working with a university for its fiscal sponsorship needs when it was the recipient of one large multi-year grant. As TAP’s funding base became more diverse, it was apparent that another fiscal sponsor might be a better fit. TSNE’s fiscal sponsorship program allowed TAP to continue its relationship with the university on the content side but while utilizing a fiscal sponsor better able to respond to TAP’s needs regarding multiple sources of funding.
This arrangement has allowed TAP to focus on their mission, supporting community-based advocacy to improve public and private healthcare policy. TSNE is able to provide TAP with valuable assistance in accounting and human resource management.
You understand just how critical TAP’s work is when you realize that the ranks of the medically uninsured have increased by nearly 50 percent in the last 15 years, from just over 31 million in 1987 to almost 45 million people in 2005. Through partnership, TSNE is helping to provide the infrastructure that helps TAP bring about much needed social change.
Teach Our Children: Parents Making a Difference
 Teach Our Children (TOC) is a new organization fiscally sponsored by Third Sector New England, seeking to ensure that parents are truly involved with education policy and decision-making and rightfully acknowledged as critical participants in the success of their school system. TOC was founded in the spring of 2006 by three New Haven natives - two public school parents and a community organizer - and is now led by a core of 20 low and moderate income parents, with a growing membership of over 250.
This fall, TOC successfully amended Board of Education policy changes that threatened to limit parents’ and the public’s access to schools and ability to participate in school board meetings. TOC parents circulated flyers, emails and petitions; garnered press coverage; and met with other parents and allies, board members, representatives from the mayor’s and superintendent’s offices, and administrators to discuss alternative policy language. Parents testified at a Board of Education meeting for over two hours - described by the board president as “a first since I’ve been on the board” - and as a result of these efforts, the Board of Education approved TOC’s alternative policy language.
Catalyzing Community Power
TOC sees a dynamic relationship between building the capacity of low and moderate income parents and fostering school improvement. By developing leaders, catalyzing community power and enhancing social capital through membership-based organizing, parent leaders help create public accountability. This leads to improvements in equity and school/community connections, which ultimately influence the quality of the curriculum and instruction and improve the climate of schools.
Teach Our Children’s three primary activities are Membership Development, Leadership Development, and Issue Campaign Development, ranging from door-to-door outreach to helping new members meet with funders.
Sustaining a Vision
TOC believes this approach will add value to other school improvement and parent involvement initiatives - including those internal to schools - by helping sustain an educational vision, maintain persistence, build political capital and will for action, and make real changes that reflect parents’ and community members’ concerns. This is supported by research showing that education organizing improves outcomes and transforms school systems - community organizing initiatives developed outside the traditional school system with the ultimate goal of working with schools can help make school improvement work.
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