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‘We became a non-profit so others did not have to.”

- Jenny Lee, former Executive Director of Allied Media Projects

This Spring, we are celebrating our 20th anniversary of cultivating media for liberation at Allied Media Projects. We remain in awe of the brilliance of our network – creators and visionaries helping us reimagine ourselves and our movements.

One of AMP's main commitments, as we look to the next 20 years, is to continue growing thriving movements through our Sponsored Projects Programs. We are excited to share this conversation between Sarah Gonzales, the current Director of Sponsored Projects Program, and Toni Moceri, the former Director of Sponsored Projects Program and current Co-Executive Director of Allied Media Projects, about AMP’s journey with fiscal sponsorship to provide support, infrastructure and nourishment to the movements and people building the world we need.

Toni Moceri: From 2007 to 2014, the work of Allied Media Projects mainly involved producing a yearly conference, the Allied Media Conference and implementing Detroit Future, a city-wide movement to facilitate just and creative broadband adoption activities. During this time, the need to support the liberatory work of media-based organizing beyond the container of the conference and broadband activities emerged. Many of our first fiscally sponsored projects emerged from the years of organizing work happening through the conference sessions and network gatherings and broadband efforts, and these groups needed a way to be resourced and grow in an ongoing way.

In 2014, with a strong commitment to support grassroots networks of liberatory media making, Allied Media Projects became a fiscal sponsor. Fiscal sponsorship is a relationship through which one organization operates under the umbrella of another with a shared mission, in order to access charitable funding and administrative support without having to become their own 501c3 non-profit. You can check out all of our amazing projects here.

Toni Moceri: We make the radical practical through providing infrastructure and behind the scenes capacity for projects. Because we are a 501(c)(3) organization and fiscal sponsor, we provide the means by which projects and people can access contributed funding—donations and foundation grants—without having to build the organizational infrastructure to be responsible for compliance. As a fiscal sponsor, AMP is taking on the financial and legal responsibility of the project’s work, and in many ways some of the risk associated.

Sarah Gonzales: We have learned so much from our peers in the fiscal sponsorship realm. One of the ways AMP is unique is our relationships with projects and their teams often come from long standing community building within the AMC. Additionally, many of the AMP staff also have projects, or have been or are currently community organizers. Fiscal Sponsorship as a field has a history rooted in white, cis male leadership, due to our roots AMP staff continues to be representative of much more diverse leadership. We are proud to be Queer, Trans, GNC, Black and POC led. We'll always be growing and evolving to be the best support we can for projects so their critical work can be done.

Sarah Gonzales: When I think about the future, I think of expanding, not necessarily outward but into fullness. With the Sponsored Projects Program, we have to continue to fight against white supremacist notions of growth and expansion while striving to offer the most care filled and personable support possible for our current projects.

AMP is excited to continue growing our team and our ability to nourish our Detroit rootedness. We continue to dream about how to support media for liberation in Detroit and beyond. I’m grateful to be in this work as I witness how the projects move about this universe in a multitude of ways.

“When our personal and collective struggle overwhelms our spirits, many of us find solace in unexpected pleasures. Do you smile as the apple juice runs down your chin or does the network of seeds inside your favorite squash arrest your attention?”

Allied Media Projects is rooted in 20 years of movement wisdom through the Allied Media Conference and the many forms of community weaving that sprang from it. You can access this deep community wisdom through the Allied Media Library.

This month, as we welcome spring, we are revisiting 2022’s AMP Seeds event, “Wisdom of Small Joys” with adrienne maree brown and Ross Gay. Celebrated writers, Ross Gay and adrienne maree brown, explore how their practices of reveling the comforts small joys bring have brought about individual and collective transformation.