Expenditure responsibility
The extra oversight a private foundation must exercise when it grants to an organisation that is not a public charity — a pre-grant enquiry, a written agreement, separate accounting by the grantee, and reports until the money is spent.
Part of the GrantTrove grant funding glossary — one entry for every field the catalogue stores.
Also called ER grant
In detail
It is the mechanism that makes grants to non-charities possible at all: to a for-profit, to a foreign organisation without an equivalency determination, to a group without exempt status.
It is administratively heavy, which is why many foundations simply decline rather than take it on. That is a policy choice, not a rule, and a foundation that has done it before will usually do it again for the right project.
Against fiscal sponsorship
Expenditure responsibility is a duty the foundation takes on to fund a body directly. Fiscal sponsorship puts a charity in between so the duty does not arise. They solve the same problem from opposite ends, and neither is a field on an opportunity: both are arrangements between an applicant and a funder.
How GrantTrove stores it
- `elig_entity_types` records who a notice says may apply, and `elig_note` keeps wording the vocabulary cannot express — which is where a funder’s willingness to consider a non-charity would appear if it stated one.
- We never widen an eligibility list to cover an arrangement a notice did not mention.
Common questions
Can a foundation fund a for-profit?
Yes, with expenditure responsibility, if it is willing to take it on.
Is it the same as fiscal sponsorship?
No. Sponsorship avoids the duty; expenditure responsibility accepts it.
Do you flag funders that will do it?
No. It is a policy stated in prose, if at all, and a partial flag would mislead about the rest.