OLS Fiscally Sponsored Community (FSC) policies

Contacting OLS

We maintain a fiscally sponsored community inbox that is monitored by multiple people in the FSC team (currently Bethan, Patricia, and Yo.) Emails to fsc[at]we-are-ols.org will generally be answered within five business days.

FSC policies

General

Please notify OLS at least one month before any grant deadline to share planned budgets and activities - ideally longer. This is particularly important when a larger number of payments or communications will be needed, in order to plan our workload. We’ll work with you to find a mutually agreeable timeline.

Contracts and documentation

When we onboard an FSC, we go through two steps:

Agreement in principle (for scenarios when we know money might come, but it hasn’t happened yet - e.g. a grant proposal is being submitted but not yet awarded, or a consultancy contract is being drafted).
- You can preview the in-principle agreement here: DOCX, ODT, Markdown, PDF
Fiscal hosting contract
- You can preview the contract here: DOCX, ODT, Markdown, PDF. We apologise, it’s wordy and in lawyerese! The docx and odt file formats have comments that may help reading and understanding the contract.
- If something doesn’t sit right or isn’t clear, we’re happy to talk about what adjustments can be made. Due to legal restrictions, there may be times we can’t flex the way we’d prefer, but we’ll always try to do our best.

Advance policy / “negative balance” for FSCs

Generally: No going into the negative

As a general rule, FSCs are not eligible to overspend (e.g. go below zero) any balances they may have. This is why we require clear budget / spending plans when accepting new chunks of money (grants, contracts).

This should never come as a surprise, but in any case, your OLS account manager will discuss with you if balances are getting low and it looks like this could be a risk.

Exceptions for low-risk cash advances must be pre-arranged

If there is a good justification for an advance, we may be willing to accept it on a case-by-case basis. Advances must be low-risk (e.g. you have already signed a contract with a trustworthy client, or have agreed to place a refundable deposit).

Speak to your account manager to discuss this. The account manager will ask a few questions to confirm if we feel the risk is manageable.

Be prepared to answer:

How high is the confidence that this gap will be filled in the next 6 months?
How much advance are you asking for?
What happens if the advance isn’t repayable (example: event falls through and the deposit is lost).

We will obtain written agreement for scenarios where advances are needed, and record it in the FSC decision log spreadsheet for your team.

Preparing budgets for your work

Please use the OLS budget template [This link will create a new copy of the document] to ensure it covers the items we find are necessary, including pay bands, exchange rates, and likely fields required by funders.

How to credit OLS

We don’t require this! However if you wish to, you could use this:

Plain text credit:

AwesomeOpenScienceCommunity is fiscally hosted by OLS.

AwesomeOpenScienceCommunity is fiscally hosted by <a href="https://we-are-ols.org">OLS</a>.

Credit OLS with an image:

AwesomeOpenScienceCommunity is fiscally hosted by OLS

<div width="300px">
    <a href="https://we-are-ols.org">
      <img src="https://we-are-ols.org/images/logo/ols-transparent-bg.png" alt="OLS logo - two leaves and the letters OLS" width="43" height="36" style="margin:6px" />
    </a>
    AwesomeOpenScienceCommunity is fiscally hosted by <a href="https://we-are-ols.org">OLS</a>
</div>

Fiscal Hosting