Fiscal Nonprofit Services
The back office behind your mission.
Fiscal sponsorship and nonprofit financial administration for projects that are ready to raise and spend charitable dollars responsibly. We carry the 501(c)(3) status, the accounting and the compliance so your team can carry the work.
- Charitable status on day one
- 501(c)(3)
- Financial statements
- Monthly
- Payroll & compliance support
- Full
"Good programs die from bad back offices."
We take the paperwork so leaders can stay with the people they serve.
What We Provide
Services under one umbrella.
A complete finance and compliance function, priced as a percentage of funds administered rather than a full-time hire.
Fiscal Sponsorship
Launch under our 501(c)(3) umbrella. Your project receives tax-deductible gift status, grant eligibility and charitable standing on day one — no IRS waiting period.
Donation & Grant Administration
We receive, receipt and restrict funds on your behalf, track grant budgets and drawdowns, and produce the reports funders expect at closeout.
Bookkeeping & Fund Accounting
Monthly close, restricted-fund tracking, functional expense allocation and a clean chart of accounts built for nonprofit audits and Form 990 preparation.
Payroll & Contractor Payments
Onboarding, payroll processing, benefits coordination, 1099 and W-2 filings, and stipend disbursements for fellows, mentors and program staff.
Compliance & Filings
State charitable registrations, annual reports, insurance, 990 filings and policy templates so nothing lapses while you focus on programs.
Governance & Board Support
Board recruitment, meeting cadence, minutes, conflict-of-interest policies and coaching for leaders stepping into fiduciary responsibility for the first time.
How It Works
From first call to first dollar.
Most projects are sponsored and receiving funds within a few weeks of the first conversation.
Discovery Call
We review your mission, budget, funding pipeline and timeline to confirm charitable alignment and the right service tier.
Agreement & Onboarding
You sign a fiscal sponsorship or services agreement. We open your restricted fund, set up accounts and connect your donation and grant channels.
Run Your Program
You lead the work. We handle funds in and out, payroll, receipts, reporting and compliance, with a monthly statement you can hand to any funder.
Grow or Graduate
Stay sponsored for the long term, or use our support to incorporate and receive your own 501(c)(3) determination — we transfer assets and records cleanly.
Who We Serve
Built for mission builders.
If your work is charitable and your funding is real, we can hold the fiscal side of it.
New & Emerging Projects
Community initiatives that need charitable status now, without spending a year and thousands of dollars on incorporation and IRS filings.
Established Nonprofits
Organizations with programs but no finance department, looking to outsource bookkeeping, payroll and compliance to a mission-aligned partner.
Grant-Funded Collaboratives
Coalitions and pilot programs that need one accountable fiscal agent to receive, restrict and report on multi-partner funding.
What's Included
A funder-ready paper trail.
Every sponsored project gets the same disciplined financial infrastructure we hold ourselves to.
- Tax-deductible gift processing with donor acknowledgment letters
- Restricted fund accounting and monthly financial statements
- Grant budget tracking, invoicing and funder reporting support
- Payroll, contractor payments and year-end tax filings
- Liability and workers' compensation insurance coverage
- Annual audit and Form 990 preparation support
- Charitable registration and state compliance monitoring
- Coaching on governance, earned revenue and sustainability
Banking
Banking built for nonprofits.
Nonprofit banking should be built for restricted funds, grant reporting and charitable oversight — not adapted from corporate tools. We pair your fiscal fund with banking, cards, payments and reporting in one place.
High-Yield Operating Accounts
Checking that earns on idle balances instead of leaving them flat. Operating cash, reserves and restricted funds stay liquid while they work for the mission.
Sub-Accounts per Grant & Program
Open a dedicated sub-account for each grant, program or sponsored project, so restricted dollars are separated at the account level — not just in a spreadsheet.
Cards With Spend Controls
Issue cards to staff, fellows and program leads with per-card limits, categories and receipt capture, so field spending stays inside the budget it was approved against.
Payments & Bill Pay in One Place
ACH, checks, vendor bill pay, reimbursements and stipends run alongside your banking — no patchwork of disconnected tools that were never built for nonprofits.
Reporting That Matches the Books
Balances, transactions and fund tags flow straight into fund accounting, so monthly statements, funder reports and audit prep reconcile without manual rebuilding.
Compliance-First Oversight
Dual approvals, role-based access and documented controls on every account — the governance funders and auditors expect from charitable dollars.
Reserve Investment Options
Long-term reserves shouldn't sit idle. We help boards put reserve capital to work with a written investment policy and appropriate, mission-aligned options.
Donations Flowing In
Inbound giving lands in the same place as your banking and payments, so gifts are receipted, restricted and reported without juggling separate systems.
Built for good, designed for growth.
Network FDIC Coverage
Balances can be spread across a network of insured banks so millions in aggregate FDIC coverage protects charitable funds, instead of a single-institution limit.
No Minimums, No Hidden Fees
No minimum balance, no transaction fees and no lockups on your operating cash — a simple, published fee structure your board can read in a minute.
Automated & Recurring Payments
Schedule recurring transfers, stipends, rent and vendor payments once and let them run, so month-end isn't a scramble of manual approvals.
Custom Team Permissions
Add staff, bookkeepers and board treasurers in seconds with role-based permission levels — view only, initiate, or approve — on each account.
Integrations That Fit Your Stack
Connect payroll, accounting and donor tools so transactions sync instead of being re-keyed, keeping fund accounting accurate between closes.
Effortless Check Handling
Positive pay and lockbox handling for the checks nonprofits still receive and issue — faster deposits with far less exposure to check fraud.
Activity Notifications
Email alerts on deposits, payments, approvals and unusual activity keep program leads and treasurers informed without logging in daily.
Dedicated, Around-the-Clock Support
A named account contact plus 24/7 support by phone, text or email — not a ticket queue that treats a nonprofit like a low-priority small business.
- 175%
- average higher interest than a prior checking account
- 5x
- faster payments experience for staff and vendors
- 96%
- of nonprofits would recommend nonprofit-native banking
Trust & Compliance
What we provide, what our partners provide, and what we can't promise.
Plain-language disclosures for every banking feature listed above, so your board and funders can see exactly where responsibility sits before you open an account.
- Who provides the accounts
- Fulcrum Impact is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and fiscal sponsor, not a bank. Deposit accounts, cards and payment rails described here are provided by nonprofit-focused financial technology partners and their member banks. Account agreements are between you (or your sponsored project, held under our EIN) and those providers.
- About FDIC coverage
- FDIC insurance is provided by the member banks holding the funds, subject to their terms and applicable limits. Where partners use a deposit network to extend coverage across multiple banks, coverage depends on the network's structure and your balances at each bank. We do not insure deposits ourselves and cannot guarantee coverage amounts.
- How to read the figures on this page
- Interest, yield and performance figures are examples reported by our banking technology partners for nonprofit customers generally. They are not offers, quotes, projections or promises of results for your organization, and rates and fees can change at any time. Nothing on this page is investment, tax or legal advice.
- Cards, controls and approvals
- Spend limits, card controls, receipt capture and approval workflows are administrative tools. They reduce the chance of an out-of-policy charge but do not eliminate it, and they do not replace your board's oversight duties or a formal audit. Final authority over sponsored-project spending remains with Fulcrum Impact as the legal entity of record.
- Eligibility and onboarding
- Account opening is subject to the provider's application, identity verification and compliance review. Eligibility, documentation requirements and timelines are set by the provider, so we cannot pre-approve an account or commit to an opening date on their behalf.
- Records, privacy and disclosure
- We use banking and bookkeeping records to produce statements, grant reports and required filings such as the Form 990, and to respond to funder or auditor requests. Fees, terms and privacy practices for the banking platform itself are disclosed by the provider in the agreements you receive before opening an account.
Fulcrum Impact is not a bank, broker-dealer or investment adviser. Banking and cash-management capabilities described on this page are delivered by third-party financial technology partners and their member banks; rates, fees, FDIC coverage and account terms are set by those partners and may change without notice. Statistics are partner-reported examples, not guarantees of results. This page is general information only and is not investment, tax, accounting or legal advice — review the provider's agreements and consult your own advisers before opening an account.
Every dollar accounted for, down to the fund.
Sponsored projects bank inside our fiscal structure, so deposits, card spend and vendor payments are already tagged to the right grant or program when your monthly statement and funder reports are produced.
Banking FAQ
Questions nonprofits ask before they bank with us
Eligibility, timelines, fees, FDIC coverage and how controlled cards work in practice.
Included With Every Sponsorship
You also get a place to grow your movement.
Beyond the books and filings, every project we sponsor is handed the keys to a living community platform — bethechange.social — built for nonprofits and the people who want to leave the world better than they found it.
bethechange.social is where mission-driven organizations and everyday changemakers come together. It gives your project a home online, the tools to rally supporters, and a network of peers who are walking the same road — so the work of strengthening the world can happen together, not in isolation. It comes standard with fiscal sponsorship: no extra setup, no separate bill.
Your Own Website
A home for your mission on the web — a branded site you control, with pages, story updates and a public presence you can point donors, volunteers and partners to.
Activity Feeds
Share wins, calls to action and updates in a living feed that keeps your community current — no newsletter bottleneck, no one left out of the loop.
Group Chats
Bring your board, volunteers and beneficiaries into private conversations organized by project, so the people doing the work can talk in real time.
Workshops & Events
Host live trainings, convenings and skill-building sessions, and keep a library your members can return to whenever they need to grow.
Raise Money
Run campaigns and accept gifts directly through the platform — tied to your fiscal fund, so every contribution is tracked, receipted and tax-deductible.
Train With Leaders
Learn alongside other nonprofit leaders who have been where you are — peer circles, mentorship and shared lessons that shorten the path from idea to impact.
Work Together
Find allies, join forces on campaigns and co-build across organizations, because the world gets better faster when good people stop working alone.
Our Team
Who you'll work with.
The people who keep the books clean, the filings current and the funders confident.
Katy Howe
Founder, Howe Business Services
Katy Howe is the founder of Howe Business Services, a bookkeeping and business-finance consulting practice built on a single conviction: clarity creates confidence — and nowhere more so than in your finances. She came to that belief after decades in government leadership, corporate finance and organizational development.1
She holds a Master's degree in Public Administration and brings more than 30 years of experience managing multimillion-dollar budgets and complex operations.2
She founded Howe Business Services to offer a bespoke approach to financial support that meets each organization exactly where it is — bringing structure to the chaos, translating numbers into insight and building operational systems that fit the way each client actually works.3
Her work goes well beyond bookkeeping: designing smart financial systems, turning data into clear strategy and moving leaders from guesswork to clarity and control. That is exactly the discipline behind Fulcrum Impact's fiscal services — monthly closes leaders can read, restricted funds tracked with intention, and financials that hold up in front of any funder.4
Bio details sourced from howebusiness.com/about (howebusiness.com/about/).
Ready to talk through your books?
Book a free 30-minute consultation to review your fiscal sponsorship, fund accounting and reporting needs — and leave with a clear next step.
Frequently Asked
Common questions.
Straight answers on how fiscal sponsorship works, what you control, and what we carry for you.
What is fiscal sponsorship?
Fiscal sponsorship lets a charitable project operate under the 501(c)(3) status of an established nonprofit sponsor. Donors can give tax-deductible gifts to your project immediately, and you can apply for grants that require charitable status — without incorporating your own nonprofit or waiting for IRS approval.
How long does it take to get started?
Most projects are onboarded within one to two weeks. After a discovery call and a signed sponsorship agreement, we open your restricted fund, set up accounts and connect your donation and grant channels so you can begin receiving charitable funds.
Who keeps control of our program and mission?
You do. You lead the work, set strategy and deliver programs. Fulcrum Impact holds the 501(c)(3) umbrella and handles funds in and out, accounting, payroll, receipts, reporting and compliance — so your team can stay focused on the people you serve.
Can we eventually get our own 501(c)(3) status?
Yes. Many projects stay sponsored long term, while others use our support to incorporate and apply for their own IRS determination. When you are ready to graduate, we transfer assets and records cleanly so there is no disruption to your funding or programs.
What does fiscal sponsorship cost?
Sponsorship is funded through an administrative fee on funds flowing through your project, typically a percentage of donations and grants received. The exact rate depends on your service tier and transaction volume, and we confirm it during the discovery call before any agreement is signed.
What reporting do we receive?
You receive monthly financial statements with restricted-fund tracking and functional expense allocation, plus the funder reports, grant drawdown summaries and year-end tax filings (990 support) that funders and boards expect.
Still have questions? Start a conversation and we will walk you through it.
Get Started — Banking Services
Ready to bank with us?
Tell us who banks today, which grants need their own sub-account and when cards need to be in hand. We will confirm eligibility and map the account structure before you move a dollar.
Interest: Banking services