Excess Returns · Saturday, September 26, 2026
Eric Jackman of Data for the People announced that the organization has officially become a sponsored entity of Fiscal Sponsorship Allies. This move was necessary because the IRS wait time for 501(c)(3) conversion is over a year, and Data for the People relies on donations to operate.
“And so I'm like, I gotta figure out a different way. And there's this entire industry called the fiscal sponsor, a fiscal sponsor industry. Where you have 501 C3s that will use, you know, they have legal council and everything and they will vet your projects, Data for the People, um, to make sure it is charitable and educational. And then if they approve you and they bring you on board, they'll roll you underneath kind of their their umbrella. And so our fiscal sponsor is called Fiscal Sponsorship Allies.”
“So, um, yeah, when you go to the website, you are actually donating to Fiscal Sponsorship Allies for the Data for the People project, and the money just goes straight into our our bank account with them and then we can actually, you know, pay for stuff coming out of that, which is really all, you know, the tech stack at this point in time, given that we've evolved into a technology company.”