Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. I guess the morning is over here. Good afternoon.
Hi everyone. How are you all doing? Any energy in here? The last session of the day? Yeah,
everyone seems pretty tired. Okay, I'm Angela. Great to meet you. This is Madeline and we're
from Code for Science and Society. How many of you build products? How many of you are
working on products? I assume almost every hand in this room is probably going to go up. Keep it up,
keep it up, keep it up. All right, how many of you love operations of those people with their
hands up? How many of you love running payroll every month? How many of you love when something
happens in your bank doesn't actually pay the people? Everyone's calling you? No hands up.
All right, well, so we have the magic solution for every single one of you that put your hands down.
How many of you have heard of fiscal sponsorship? Oh, all right, well, you know the end of the talk,
but Madeline, what is fiscal sponsorship? This magical thing that might help everyone in this room.
Fiscal sponsorship is indeed a magical thing and it leverages economies of scale so that we build
shared operational and administrative infrastructure so that projects can thrive. What that means is
that you get to work under the umbrella of an organization who will handle things like your payroll,
like your taxes, like your insurance, things that take up so much time and energy and take away
from the ability that you have to invest in the things that you care about most. And it's not just
that when you participate in an organization, you get extended some of the benefits of being in
part of a nonprofit. In the US, for example, that's a 501c3, where you'll yield certain tax benefits.
But what else do you get out of a fiscal sponsorship, Angela? Is it just operational and administrative infrastructure?
Boring, shmoring, taxes, blah, payroll. The most interesting thing to me, I'm a people person,
can you tell? I like people. Yes, I like people. Shocking. I think it's the people, right? Like,
as we build all of these open source tech products, like everyone's head down, oh my god, I gotta get
this code out. It's gonna break. What if you could actually come together with other people
as we're doing here, but do it on a regular basis? You talk about the challenges you're facing. You
share best practice, lessons learned. You talk about which funders might give you some money.
The ability to actually come together and build camaraderie and build products that have shared
ethos and mission alignment is, in my opinion, one of the best parts of being under a mission
aligned fiscal sponsor. So we are very excited to answer any questions if you have them. We
represent a fiscal sponsor. We are based in the US, but there are European fiscal sponsors as well.
So for those who might not be familiar with them, they're actually some regional. Regionally, I
think there's one in Berlin, if I'm not mistaken. And so it is an option even if you are a Europe
based. So happy answering questions. Good luck with all your product building. Good luck finding
someone to help you run your payroll. And look forward. She's very, very adept. Thank you so much.
I see no questions, but come find us. We have time for questions. Yes, yes. Questions. Interactive.
Someone said they wanted interaction. Yeah, please. Sounds. Maybe for our friends in online worlds.
Non-profit. We have now founded an US entity and we are about to apply for fiscal sponsorship.
This card that you take, so that's like a 15% cut. Do you consider this expensive or cheap?
The question was, do you consider a 15% overhead charge or fee expensive or cheap?
That's a good question, right? I think that every fiscal host does have some sort of percentage.
It can range from, I think the lowest I've seen is 8%. This is my colleague,
Rhea. Hi, Rhea. Emily Aucou, hey. We all are from CSNS. I think the lowest I've seen is 8%.
And maybe on the higher side is 15. Usually this covers fees, right? So even just as those who run
your own payrolls know there are fees with so many various platform services. And so all of those
cost the labor of the operations and finance team. So I think it's a good question to ask. And as you're
shopping around for your fiscal host, ask what they do and what they don't do. So some of them
are very low touch. Others are very involved. And so depending on those aspects, the fee will change.
Definitely. Anyone want to add anything? Angela, repeat the name of your org again.
Our org is called Code for Science and Society, CSNS. We are based and registered in the U.S.
as a 501C3. And we take open tech and open science projects and are willing to share our menu of
services with you all if you're interested. So please come find us. Thank you. Thanks so much.