RVC Seattle

Rooted in Vibrant Communities is a communities-of-color-led organization formed in 2015 to build the strength of grassroots organizations led by communities of color. RVC promotes social justice by fiscally sponsoring 15 POC-led organizations in diverse King County communities to provide holistic capacity-building support with an intertwined set of services.

RVC Seattle works both within community-based organizations and across the nonprofit sector to increase skills and capacity that support BIPOC-led organizations, and their communities, to thrive. Our work supporting community groups is practical and critical to every organization’s sustainability: We serve as fiscal sponsor to our partner organizations, following a Model A fiscal sponsorship approach that offers robust, comprehensive services. These include financial management, guidance on financial strategies, budget analysis, grantwriting, support building philanthropic relationships, human resources, payroll support, participation in pooled benefits, shared learning across our cohort of partner organizations and more that support each group to build and maintain infrastructure and become sustainable.Our approach helps our partner organizations build skills and confidence to successfully navigate the sector and centers their expertise in strengthening communities. Our work across the nonprofit sector is focused on engaging funders, policymakers and other nonprofit stakeholders to re-frame and re-balance our collective work and create a world that leaves behind a scarcity mindset where community groups are needy and funders’ resources step in to save them. Instead, we invite our peers to embrace a mindset of collective growth and well-being, where community groups are recognized for the expertise they possess as a result of their lived experiences and funders work collaboratively alongside them to, together, build a sustainable, healthy community. We consider ourselves a living experiment in this effort – trying out-of-the-box strategies and sharing our learnings – and believe that innovation lies not in how we operate internally, but in how the nonprofit ecosystem effectively adapts to diverse approaches to supporting diverse communities. We prioritize cultivating a network of relationships and resources that can contribute to helping our partner organizations become more powerful, effective and sustainable when carrying out their missions.