Quarterly Newsletter | April 2024

The Inside Scoop from Ruth

Amplifying Our Projects and Our Sector

This past quarter, Community Initiatives celebrated the work of our projects in 2023 and advocated for the future of fiscal sponsorship on a federal scale.

Our projects made a difference in the lives of 1,196,735 people, and 77% felt they could better focus on their mission and activities. In addition, there was a 40% increase among those who felt they received valuable support and partnerships when working with Community Initiatives.

Despite the challenges that impacted our communities on an economic and social scale, we continue to thrive together!

Secondly, as a founding member of the National Network of Fiscal Sponsors, Community Initiatives prioritizes working within its best practices and sharing our knowledge to better the sector. On November 13, 2023, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Treasury introduced proposed rulemaking on donor advised funds (DAFs) that would seriously impact a fiscal sponsor’s ability to conduct its work in service to nonprofit projects. On February 15, 2024, Community Initiatives submitted a public comment urging the IRS to reconsider its broad definitions of DAFs and information on the unique partnership of fiscal sponsors and projects. We stand with our fiscal sponsorship colleagues and will continue to monitor the proposed regulations as they develop.

I look forward to celebrating our collective successes each year, and our 2023 Annual Report allows us to do just that! Visit our website to view the report.

Community Initiatives is proud to be in service to great ideas.

Get Involved

Join our projects at these upcoming events…

The Fund for People in Parks

The Fund for People in Parks distributed their 40th edition of their newsletter, Trailblazer, last month. In it, they share updates about their ongoing and recently completed projects in California, Oregon and Hawaii, an interview with Redwood National and State Parks Superintendent Steve Mietz, and celebrate Women’s History Month with favorite stories from women involved in park projects.

Read the Newsletter

North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance

North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance (NAPSA) Director Erika Fleury will be a featured panelist in an upcoming webinar hosted by the American Bar Association that explores how former laboratory chimpanzees are re-homed to primate sanctuaries. Panelists will explore the world of these sanctuaries and learn about the legal framework within which they operate. The webinar will be held on Thursday, May 9th, at 12pm PDT.

Register to Attend

Celebrating Project Anniversaries

This last quarter, these projects celebrated an anniversary with Community Initiatives. Learn more about our projects on our website.

Thank you for choosing Community Initiatives as your partner in achieving your mission!

Available Funding

Follow our Opportunities page to stay up-to-date on grants and funding initiatives.

Landscape Conservation Supported
Award: Up to $25K
Application Deadline: April 26

The Network for Landscape Conservation’s Catalyst Fund strives to accelerate the pace and practice of collaborative landscape conservation and stewardship across the United States. The fund makes strategic investments in strengthening the collaborative capacity of place-based, community-grounded landscape partnerships to better position partnerships to achieve long-term conservation and stewardship success. Grants can support partnership coordination staffing and costs associated with other collaborative process activities such as convenings, communications, partner and community engagement, governance development, and strategic planning and prioritization. A portion of the Fund is dedicated to supporting Indigenous leadership in landscape conservation and stewardship, and proposals are accepted from tribally led partnerships.

Learn more.

Theatrical Arts Funding
Award: $5K – $35K
LOI Deadline: June 3 – December 2, 2024

Venturous Theater Fund’s Venturous Capital Grants support the production of bold, experimental new plays at small and medium-sized theaters in the United States. Funding is limited to text-based, author-driven new plays that are ambitious in scale, epic in scope, challenging in form, controversial in subject matter, experimental in concept, and/or unabashed in their theatricality. Professional nonprofit theaters with 501(c)3 status (or fiscally sponsored by a 501(c)(3) organization) and annual budgets of under $5 million are eligible to submit LOIs. Additional parameters apply.

Learn more.

From the Field

What we’re learning…

Fiscal Sponsorship and Proposed Donor Advised Fund Regulations

Read former Community Initiatives Board Member Gene Takagi’s (Principal at NEO Law Group) article, “Fiscal Sponsorship & Proposed DAF Regs?” for more information on the proposed IRS regulations and how fiscal sponsors can be affected should they move forward.

Meet Our New Staff

Dani Belisle

Dani joins our Human Resources team with nearly two decades of human resources experience and a decade-long specialization in nonprofit fiscal sponsorship. Read Dani’s bio.

Follow Community Initiatives on Social Media!

You can find us at the following:

Let us know what’s going on with your project and we’ll do our best to get it into the next Project News and share on social media.

Email us at communications@communityinitiatives.org.

If you would like to learn more about our projects, please visit our projects page.