Administrative Partnership at Trailhead
Trailhead’s Administrative Partnership Program (APP) provides fiscal sponsorship, administrative services, and operational support for people and organizations working to improve health and well-being in their communities.
Through APP, we help you access the infrastructure you need so you can focus on serving your community and growing your impact.
We Help You Focus on Your Mission.
Running a successful project or organization requires more than a great idea. Managing finances, grants, contracts, compliance, and operations takes time and resources.
APP provides an administrative home for initiatives, nonprofits, collaboratives, and community-based projects. Our team helps you manage the day-to-day administrative responsibilities to help you grow.
Most importantly, our partners remain the leaders of their work.
What is Fiscal Sponsorship?
Fiscal sponsorship is a partnership that allows a project or initiative to operate under the legal and tax-exempt status of an established nonprofit organization.
For many community-led initiatives, fiscal sponsorship provides a way to receive grants and charitable donations without creating and managing an independent nonprofit organization.
Through fiscal sponsorship at Trailhead, partners can focus more time on serving their community while we help manage the legal, financial, and administrative responsibilities that can make nonprofit work difficult.
We Offer Flexible Partnership Options
Every project has different goals, funding needs, and staffing structures. We offer several fiscal sponsorship and administrative partnership models to meet partners where they are. Whether you’re launching a new initiative or growing an existing one, we work alongside you to identify the support that fits your goals.
How We Help Behind the Scenes
Regardless of which partnership model you choose, we provide every Administrative Partner with financial and operational support.
Financial Supports
We provide the financial oversight and support that helps you build trust with funders and focus on your mission.
Operations Support
We offer tools, resources, and insight to help you grow your impact.
Is APP Right For You?
Administrative partnership may be a good fit you are:
Why Partner With Trailhead?
We’ve helped communities and organizations navigate the administrative side of public health work for more than 30 years.
What Our Partners Are Saying
Trailhead was a huge catalyst in getting CEEMI off the ground in 2021. We needed 501(c)(3) status quickly, along with infrastructure to manage funds, legal protection, a nonprofit board, financial oversight – we didn’t have any of that. No one was going to fund us without an established platform. It was clear that to get CEEMI off the ground in 2021 to help shape the ARPA conversation heating up in Colorado, we needed a fiscal sponsor. Trailhead was a great fit, and they’ve been so important to our growth.
Trailhead provides the essential infrastructure and credibility – incredibly important for a new nonprofit – without needless barriers and bureaucracy. They help us ensure that important fiscal controls are in place. They’ve done so much from sharing 501(c)(3) status and audited financials to managing grants, providing legal counsel, and handling hiring and payroll. They also have the ability to direct dollars through subcontracts. In so many ways, I feel it’s been much easier to take this risk and start CEEMI under the umbrella of a more established fiscal sponsor.
Trailhead’s support has been a huge help in allowing us to actually focus on the work. Nonprofit work often begins with a strong desire to make a community impact, but administrative tasks can quickly consume the time and energy needed to-do’s. A lot of folks aren’t familiar with fiscal sponsorship or how it works, but our association with Trailhead has been invaluable, especially when it comes to grant applications. This partnership has allowed us to direct our attention to the community on a day-to-day basis, without being bogged down by other burdens.
Fiscal sponsorship has allowed us to move from being a program at Jeffco Public Health with less than one FTE working. Now, we have 2 full-time staff and 3 part-time contractors. Since the transition to fiscal sponsorship, we have also expanded our work from having two teams to six teams. Our teams are now able to advocate locally through our transition to fiscal sponsorship, allowing us to go beyond the foundations of collaboration and coordination we had built. Fiscal sponsorship has been an impetus of growth for us and will allow us to continue this growth.
We contract with a network of subject matter experts and trainers with experience in the field to deliver our curriculum. Trailhead is essential in allowing us to pay contractors on a timely basis and the ability to set up fee-for-service contracts swiftly. Our program’s core management team is small, so we appreciate the administrative support that Trailhead provides.
Trailhead was wonderful to work with. Their Administrative Partnership team provided expert support in finance, grants, governance, human resources, project management, and staff development, allowing us to stay focused on serving families.
My staff felt included in the larger family of Trailhead Institute and were able to participate in professional and personal development opportunities that created resilience for our team. I recommend Trailhead for any organization looking for a variety of fiscal sponsorship options. You have also been fantastic in supporting us during this organizational transition to our local public health agency.
Through fiscal sponsorship, we’ve been able to significantly increase our impact by reducing administrative burdens. Previously, during COVID, our fiscal agent was a local entity that was a great care provider but very new to handling fiscal responsibilities. This resulted in challenges with staff pay, invoicing to the state, and paperwork submission. When Trailhead stepped in, they truly worked miracles in providing administrative support from state-related matters to internal coalition needs. We honestly can’t even speak to what is it exactly that they do, they’re just busy doing it. You don’t feel like you’re working with a company, you feel like you’re working with actual people, and that makes a huge difference.
We are a small staff and have appreciated that fiscal sponsorship has allowed us to focus on building out the work with minimal administrative responsibilities.
Administrative Partnership Rooted in Equity
We believe that organizations closest to communities should have equitable access to funding and the resources needed to lead change.
Through APP, we work to reduce the barriers that often make it harder for community-based leaders and organizations to secure and manage large grants, while more established institutions have greater access to funding and administrative infrastructure.
Together, we are working toward a public health system where communities have the support and resources they need to lead solutions that reflect their unique strengths, priorities, and lived experiences.