Rethink Charity winds down Fiscal Sponsorship program

Rethink Charity has been restructuring over the last several months. There have been changes to all of our programs, and to our team. After much consideration, in October our staff and Board decided to wind down our Fiscal Sponsorship (FS) program in 2022. 

The landscape for FS services has changed dramatically since 2020. We believe other fiscal sponsors can provide services that are as good or better than Rethink Charity’s, for a comparable cost. 

We now see other Effective Altruism–aligned organizations offering FS internally, including EV Operations and Rethink Priorities. We also see many EA-aligned projects choosing a well-established, cost-competitive fiscal sponsor like Players Philanthropy Fund (PPF). 

We’re proud that our FS program played a role in helping several new projects secure funding and navigate the early stages of growth. The revenue we raised through offering FS services also played an important role in diversifying and stabilizing our operational funding.

Our team has been working with our current fiscal sponsees to support their next steps.

We look forward to sharing more information about other changes and outcomes of our restructuring.

Megan, on behalf of Rethink Charity 

Your Rethink Charity briefing for Q4, 2021 and Q1, 2022

While writing today’s briefing, I’ve reviewed ours from this time last year, and I’m feeling appreciative of our progress. Day to day, we focus on the work ahead and the problems to solve. We can forget to celebrate what the Rethink Charity team has learned and accomplished. Today’s update, though written for you, also helps us pause and reflect. 

Our progress and momentum is made possible by everyone who gives through RC Forward or to our growing cohort of fiscal sponsees. As a nonprofit, what we raise through RC Forward (via its operations allocation) or through fiscal sponsorship (via its tiered fee structure) supports the continued existence and operations of Rethink Charity and its high-impact projects. We are very grateful for your support. 

Megan and the Rethink Charity team

New and notable

• Rethink Charity: We have drafted our first overarching mission, vision, and values. We share our 2021 expenditures and 2022 budget.

• RC Forward: In mid-Q4 2021, we launched our new systems. An incredible $6.2 million CAD was given to effective charities through RC Forward in 2021, more than doubling 2020 totals. Global News featured RC Forward in The Virtuous Few, an investigative report on effective altruism in Canada. 

• Fiscal Sponsorship: In 2021, we moved $2.5 million USD of funding to our cohort of Model C fiscal sponsees, including Dao Foods, AI Safety Support, Nonlinear, and Tee Barnett Coaching. 

• EA Giving Tuesday:  Donors in the effective altruism community gave $1.3 million USD to effective nonprofits through EA Giving Tuesday, raising an estimated $410k USD in counterfactual matching through their efforts. Learn more at  eagivingtuesday.org.  

Updates from Rethink Charity (RC)

News and changes affecting all of Rethink Charity’s present and future projects

• Mission, vision, values: Historically, RC has not been driven by concrete overarching goals. We focused on guiding principles of our key projects, and were not in a position to specifically define what we stand for as an organization overall. So during two recent staff retreats, a major goal was to determine our vision, mission, and values. 

  Below are our initial (work in progress) versions of these guiding principles:

• Our vision: Effective impact without barriers

• Our mission: We simplify high-impact giving, empower teams to focus on maximizing their impact, and connect donors with effective projects they are excited to support.

• Our values:

  • Making true impact accessible to everyone

  • Supporting solutions through data-driven decision making

  • Being willing to change with an ever-changing world

  • Showing our work, accepting feedback, and improving accordingly

  • Thinking globally and acting globally

  • Sharing what we’ve learned to build an open-source knowledge base

Financial overview: Below we share our 2021 costs and 2022 projected costs for operating Rethink Charity and its current projects.

RC 2021 costs and 2022 project costs

Our project updates

RC Forward

RC Forward (rcforward.org) is Canada’s effective giving platform, connecting Canadian donors to high-impact charities globally through a regranting process. 

New systems: In mid-Q4 we launched our first CRM. Launching mid-quarter, during the giving season, had pros and cons: It was great that early issues surfaced quickly. It’s been challenging to learn while the platform’s popularity has been growing. These are good problems to have, and our new systems are far more efficient and empower data-driven insights and flexibility compared to our former processes.

Growth: In 2021, we more than doubled the amount of money moved to effective charities, compared to 2020. We’re still finalizing numbers (growing pains related to our new systems), but currently it looks like $6.2M CAD given to effective charities in 2021.

Total 2021 net amounts moved through RC Forward to high-impact charities, organized by cause area

Sustainability: We raised ~$275k CAD in operational funding, thanks to generous support from RC Forward donors in the form of operations allocations and additional tips.  

Milestones: As of the end of 2021, total cumulative money moved since launching RC Forward in late 2017 is ~$16 million CAD! 

Media coverage: Global News’ The Virtuous Few shared the stories and perspectives of several Canadians involved in effective altruism, and we were delighted to contribute to the article!

Volunteer contributions: We were able to make high-priority translation progress on RC Forward’s French website (fr.rcforward.org) thanks to the efforts of Alex Lacasse and Sophie Pelland.

Fiscal sponsorship

Our fiscal sponsorship services leverage our expertise (developed through our sponsorship of Rethink Priorities and others) to help projects navigate crucial early growth stages. 

Exciting impact-oriented projects: Our current cohort of sponsees include Dao Foods, AI Safety Support, and Nonlinear, among others. Whenever possible, we seek to sponsor projects that are part of the effective altruism community. 

You know Tee as a Rethink Charity co-founder and board member. His current focus, Tee Barnett Coaching, is one of our Model C fiscal sponsees. Check out Tee’s recent coaching report, Underinvestment at the top: what I discovered coaching a dozen EA leaders. 

Honing our focus: Rethink Charity is currently focusing on Model C fiscal sponsorship. This focus is informed by our feedback from current sponsees, and our current bandwidth, expertise, and priorities. That said, we are excited to work towards a future where we can offer Model A sponsorship to impact-oriented projects, as we did with Rethink Priorities.  

Total money moved to sponsees in 2021: We are delighted that we moved $2.5 million USD to our cohort of 11 sponsees. This generous support was given by individual donors, as well as major foundations and grantmakers. 
Read about Dao Foods’ experience with Model C fiscal sponsorship

EA Giving Tuesday Donation Matching Initiative 2021

EA Giving Tuesday organizes EA donors around the shared goal of directing more funding to highly effective nonprofits. The initiative supports these donors so that they can have the best chances of directing Facebook’s Giving Tuesday counterfactual matching funds. Learn more at www.eagivingtuesday.org. 

Grant support from the EA Infrastructure Fund: We’re appreciative that EA Giving Tuesday 2021 received a $14,700 USD grant from the EAIF. This made a significant difference in our ability to hire and to focus on this project over the 2021 giving season.  

New team: Mackenzie Bourke and Aisha Gurung joined Rethink Charity as Operations Specialist contractors for EA Giving Tuesday 2021. Both were up to the challenge of learning and onboarding quickly, learning a wide variety of project areas. As in past years, Avi Norowitz made invaluable contributions to the project. We also wish to thank Gina Stuessy and Ben West for their assistance this year. 

$1.3 million USD donated: Donors in the EA community gave more than $1.3 million USD during the Facebook match, to a wide variety of EA-aligned organizations that EA Giving Tuesday worked to ensure would be eligible for Facebook’s matching funds. (Thanks especially to EA Funds and other regranting organizations for help with facilitating eligibility.)

Effective nonprofits received $410k USD in matching! EA nonprofits all together received an estimated $410,616 in counterfactual matching through Facebook’s matching program. We were pleased with these results, given the challenges posed by the match in 2020 and our expectations for 2021.

Chart: EA Giving Tuesday 2021 donated and matched amounts, coloured by cause area.

Chart: EA Giving Tuesday 2020 donated and matched amounts, coloured by cause area, for comparison with the 2021 results in the chart shown above.

Thanks for reading!

Questions or feedback? Reach out to us at [email protected] to start the conversation. We appreciate your interest and support.