Important News about Recurring Donations to MAMAS
Published on March 14, 2024 by Meghan Hickey
Hello MAMAS community!
We sent out an email on March 4th to inform you that the Open Collective Foundation, which acts as our fiscal sponsor, will be dissolving tomorrow, March 15. We want to keep you informed about what this will mean for you and your neighbors who are part of MAMAS.
First off, MAMAS is still here for you and all our neighbors. We remain committed to the mission of mutual aid and to members of our community who lean on MAMAS for support during challenging times. As we mentioned in the previous email, MAMAS has enough money in our account to honor March, April, and May expenses as budgeted (and perhaps a bit more). Additionally, this will not affect pairs who seek reimbursement for monthly pairing costs. Despite the changes occurring within the Open Collective Foundation, all the same expense processes that you’ve used on the Open Collective website over the past year will remain the same, and you will be able to access opencollective.com/mamas as you usually do.
However, tomorrow morning, any recurring donations you may have made through Open Collective will be canceled. You can still donate today, and anything the community provides now gives us more stability while we address this change.
While we’re still addressing this change to our fiscal sponsorship internally, we believe we’ll be able to start accepting recurring donations again in the coming months with the overall goal to reestablish donations as soon as possible. We’ll be reaching out soon with further information. Your patience and attention is greatly appreciated as we work through the details of this transition.
Even though we feel able to address this problem in the short term, this challenge has reminded us to consider what options there are for sustainable and values-aligned fiscal sponsorship in the long-term. In the spirit of mutual aid, we have a request:
If you know of any organization that acts as a fiscal sponsor and which you believe would be a good fit for MAMAS, please reach out to us at [email protected] and let us know! We know that our neighbors always have something to contribute, so if this is an area in which you have knowledge and expertise, we invite you to share it with us.
Finally, thank you for your contributions to the community through MAMAS. Moments like these are difficult for small, local organizations, but support from all our neighbors is how we overcome such challenges. **Please keep an eye out for more information from us and Open Collective, which will include the notification of cancellation on March 15, and, hopefully soon after, the details on how to reestablish your recurring donation.**
As always, please feel free to email [email protected] with any questions, and we will do our best to answer in the spirit of building trust, keeping it simple, and maintaining transparency about our financial situation.
As always, please feel free to email [email protected] with any questions, and we will do our best to answer in the spirit of building trust, keeping it simple, and maintaining transparency about our financial situation.
In solidarity,
Meghan, Skylar, Sam L, Sam M, Crystal, and the MAMAS Coordinator team
Have you tried CAAS as a potential fiscal sponsor?
Hi Dennis-- We've approached CAAS in the past and are very aligned with the work done by CAAS in the community. Unfortunately, CAAS doesn't have the administrative capacity to be our fiscal sponsor. It turns out that processing $150k a year in transactions coming and going, many of which are $25 or so, is a lot of work! We do love CAAS, though, and they are the sort of organization we are hoping to partner with for the long term.
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