Making sure your fiscal sponsor, bank, HR and other partners reflect and support your culture

As newsroom leaders, we often think a lot about how our organizations embody our values, yet we rarely expect the same from the contractors and external partners. But thoughtfully choosing who you work with when you start a newsroom is an important way to build your values into your organization’s foundation. 

When we first relaunched our newsroom, we needed a bank, a fiscal sponsor, and a PEO. Here’s how we ensured that the companies and organizations we worked with aligned with our values.

Finding a bank that doesn’t fund the prison industrial complex

When looking for a bank, we had an unwieldy spreadsheet comparing all the standard things: quick setup time, low first deposit and ongoing minimum, low fees, reasonable ACH and wire rates, good interest rates, easy to use, insured cash sweeps, etc. Even though we’re a fully remote newsroom, we needed to open an account online because we couldn’t all go into a branch together, but we also wanted some convenient physical branches in case the need arose.

As a worker-led organization formed out of a union drive and a newsroom that reports on the harms of the criminal legal system, we were acutely aware of the role banks play in labor and prison issues. So, we spent considerable time evaluating banks (and some credit unions) on the following criteria:

• Has a positive social impact
• Supports/invests in their local community
• Has values that align with our newsroom
• Supports union efforts or is union-run
• Doesn’t invest in private prisons (which nixed most major banks)
• Isn’t a top fossil fuel funder (this also removed several large banks)

It’s rare that you get to be proud of your bank or thrilled about your banking options, but these criteria helped us land on a list of three of the country’s most respectable and responsible banks—any of which would have aligned well with our values.

Some of this information is available on banks’ websites or by simply googling results from industry watchdogs. For many of these criteria, we found Mighty Deposit’s searchable database invaluable.

Resource: Bank Comparison Template

Finding an HR partner that understands worker-led organizations

Many small newsrooms partner with a professional employer organization (PEO) to access reasonable rates for benefits, HR compliance, and payroll. But, as with banks, not all PEOs are created equal.

We compared monthly admin costs, medical costs, benefits packages, taxes, and dedicated support staff. (Hot tip: Ask what the average increase in medical costs was for a client like your newsroom last year. Some annual increases can be upwards of 40+%, but we found a place that is reliably less than 10%.)

We also looked at several non-traditional criteria:

• Do we like them? Ask to meet the person who will be your day-to-day contact—not just the sales rep! Make sure you like interacting with them and determine whether you think they know what they’re doing, because some do not.

• Do they reply quickly with easy-to-understand information? Some sales reps we had to chase for information, others gave us nearly 100 color-coded medical plans and didn’t explain them at all, which was a good indication they don’t work with small clients often.

• Do they have issues working with a worker-run client? With our structure, some traditional decisions or responsibilities are no longer held by a single boss, so we needed a PEO that understood our model and could provide useful guidance.

• Do they accept unionized clients? One of the most popular PEOs for nonprofit newsrooms refuses to accept unionized clients and will kick existing clients off their services—and medical plans—if their staff unionize, so it’s an important question to ask!

Resource: PEO Comparison Template

Finding a fiscal sponsor that works with unionized workplaces

A simple way to accept donations before getting your own 501c3 status is to get a fiscal sponsor, which is a nonprofit that essentially “lends” its nonprofit umbrella to projects so they can receive tax-deductible donations (in exchange for fees).

Most nonprofit newsrooms under a fiscal sponsorship use what’s called a “Model C” structure, where the newsroom is its own legal entity that pays lower fees and retains more control but needs to manage its own finances, HR, etc. (The other common option is “Model A” where a newsroom would just be a project of the fiscal sponsor.)

Some of the common questions we asked were about fees, frequency of disbursements (often only released once a month), services provided, the timeline to approve and onboard (some fiscal sponsors can take as long as 4 months), openness to being a bridge sponsor until your 501c3 status arrives, and their annual revenue (try to avoid situations where you would become their biggest client, as this means they really don’t have the capacity to currently support you.)

Again, we also asked them, and ourselves, some hard questions:

• Do we align with their other clients? If none of their clients are newsrooms or they all have different topics or regions of focus of your startup, issues could arise.

• Do they accept unionized clients? This was our biggest hurdle. When we first started out, we knew we wanted to leave the possibility of unionizing open. Plus, we strongly believe in working with partners who support labor rights. We were surprised by the number of fiscal sponsors who told us they support unions but won’t work with them.

• Do we like them and can they easily explain how their version of fiscal sponsorship works? Fiscal sponsorship is complicated, and if they can’t easily explain how they will pay your employees or your freelance writers, they won’t execute easily either.
• Do they have any issues with a worker-led model? Many fiscal sponsors work with small community organizations and can be open to different leadership models, but not all are. 

• Do they require general liability insurance? Many places require this, but we’re a fully remote newsroom, so we found that it was quite often negotiable.

• Have you had journalism clients, and will we have full editorial independence? The correct answer is obviously yes, but we found one potential fiscal sponsor who wanted to make sure we didn’t criticize a state official they often worked with. Needless to say, they were not the right fit. 

Resource: Fiscal Sponsor Comparison doc

Finding partners that suited our team, budget, and values was not easy, but it was absolutely worth it. The resources we’ve included will hopefully help guide your process if/when you are facing the same decisions, but ultimately, the best starting place is to establish what is most important to you and your team. 

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Cite this article

Chan, Tara Francis and Greene, Molly (2024, July 29). How to find vendors that meet your values. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/how-to-find-vendors-that-meet-your-values/