Gregory Colvin, author of Fiscal Sponsorship: 6 Ways To Do It Right

“(Fiscal sponsorship) should become a permanent tool in our nonprofit toolbox.” — Gregory Colvin
Photo: Saul Bromberger & Sandra Hoover Photography

Gregory Colvin, author of Fiscal Sponsorship: 6 Ways to Do It Right, has been named Outstanding Nonprofit Attorney of 2015 by a special committee of the American Bar Association.

The award — presented to San Francisco attorney Colvin by the ABA’s Business Law Section at its annual meeting Sept. 18 in Chicago — honors his four decades of commitment to nonprofit law, during which he defined fiscal sponsorship, clarifying the practice and helping to professionalize the field.

“The lawyers who have won the Nonprofit Lawyer Awards for Outstanding Attorney reads like an honor roll of the great practitioners in our part of the bar,” said committee member William M. Klimon in an email to the Directory. “Greg’s work for the nonprofit sector is widely known and respected. His prominence in areas like political activity of nonprofits and fiscal sponsorship is well earned. The ABA’s Nonprofit Organizations Committee is very pleased to be honoring Greg this year — it’s an honor overdue.”

The ABA’s Section on Business Law began recognizing the outstanding contributions in the nonprofit sector in 1999 by lawyers in the categories of Vanguard (Lifetime Achievement), Outstanding Academic, Outstanding In–House Counsel, Outstanding Young Attorney and Outstanding Nonprofit Attorney.

“When I look at the names of this year’s winners, I’m privileged to be in their company,” Colvin said in an interview. “But in getting to this place and accepting this award, I have to acknowledge that I’ve stood on the shoulders of many colleagues, especially those who’ve supported the development of fiscal sponsorship in our field — Tom Silk, who described the first three ways to structure sponsorship of projects (Models A, B, C), Drummond Pike, Tom Layton, Paul Vandeventer, Frances Phillips, Melanie Beene, and lawyers at my firm and around the country who’ve advanced the practical application and legal integrity of fiscal sponsorship.”

Colvin’s seminal publication, Fiscal Sponsorship: 6 Ways to Do It Right, first published in 1993, transformed a still-growing niche of the nonprofit sector. It changed the language and, consequently, the culture of a pragmatic, cost-effective business model for grassroots startups.

His reading of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code made a sea-change distinction between the then-popular term “fiscal agency,” which came to be called “a trap for the unwary,” and “fiscal sponsorship.” He not only renamed that region of the nonprofit world, he crafted best practices clearly, so that well-managed public charities could spread their wings, take on projects and build community capacity.

Pioneers and early adopters of fiscal sponsorship immediately began speaking his language after the book came out. The 2nd edition in 2005 cemented the publication as the bible of fiscal sponsorship. He’s working on the 3rd edition, promising comprehensive updating and significant new information, including adding a model.

Reporter Rick Cohen in the June 9, 2015, Nonprofit Quarterly called Fiscal Sponsorship: 6 Ways to Do It Right “the consistently best resource we found and frequently referred to on fiscal sponsorship. … It’s simply one example of many demonstrating how Colvin’s advice to the nonprofit sector has stood the test of time and made him — and his firm — so valuable.”

“I do hope that this award might have some salutary effect on the understanding and acceptance of fiscal sponsorship,” Colvin said. “It’s a confirmation that it’s a legitimate and useful relationship that should become a permanent tool in our nonprofit toolbox.”

Colvin joined Adler & Colvin in 1986. In addition to fiscal sponsorship, his practice focuses on nonprofits’ political and lobbying activities, complex membership organizations, donor-advised funds, anonymous giving, grantmaking, pretty much any issue that arises between individual donors and charities.

Elizabeth Kingsley, an attorney with Harmon, Curran, Spielberg + Eisenberg in Washington, D.C., and a Colvin colleague for 20 years, in a letter of support for the award called him “a moving force” in developing “thoughtful, helpful guidance recommendations, even in the face of apparent agency [IRS] indifference” in defining the scope of exempt organizations’ political activity.

And Fiscal Sponsorship, she added, ”has no doubt allowed many organizations to steer clear of legal pitfalls. … Greg’s commitment to improving the law that governs our sector is second to none.”

Posted September 17, 2015