OSHF provides a full and customizable slate of fiscal sponsorship services to mission-aligned projects focused on developing, researching and advancing open hardware in science.
We focus on supporting efforts and emerging leaders from the open science hardware community as well as working with philanthropic funders or donors seeking a partner to facilitate their own investments into the field.
Our sponsorship services can include back-office financial and operations support, grants and donations management, contracts management, expense management and reimbursement; accounts payable and receivable and monthly financial reporting. We can also explore additional services dependent on your project needs.
Our services are coupled with community building and optional mentoring and strategic support to enable sponsored projects to thrive:
- Membership in a growing community of other fiscally sponsored projects within open science hardware, providing peer support and advice.
- Mentoring and advising on strategy, fundraising and programming from our expert board and wider community.
- Support for long-term organizational development, including visioning, planning and establishing organizational infrastructure, backed by processes and policies to support your project to spin-out from fiscal sponsorship smoothly and sustainably
Our fiscal sponsorship rates are structured on a sliding scale starting at 10% of funding received. We work closely with each project we sponsor to understand their specific needs and tailor support to help them build toward their vision. Our rates are dependent on a number of factors including project resources, scope and types of support requested, amounts and types of funding to be administered, as well as other considerations associated with each project that affect the time and resources required from OSHF.
Our ultimate goal in sponsoring projects is to provide them with an enabling platform and environment in which they can focus on their mission-driven strategy and activities, while developing the organizational capacity needed to maximize their long-term ability to achieve positive impact on science, society and the planet through open science hardware.
If you are seeking or considering fiscal sponsorship, we are always up for a conversation to discuss your goals, needs and questions.
Feel free to reach out to us at sponsorship@opensciencehardware.org