The Fund
Discreet in participation. Explicit in structure.
The Momentum Fund is an advised fund. Its capital is held, administered, and disbursed by an independent public charity serving as the Fund's fiduciary sponsor — a structure that gives the Fund rare freedom to act, and gives every institution it serves a gift made in full order. The Fund keeps its own part in an institution's story quiet, and sets the terms on which it operates out in full.
Structure
What an advised fund is.
A charitable fund held within a larger public charity. The charity owns the assets, applies its standards to every grant, and issues each one. The Fund's part is judgment — research, counsel, and conviction about where capital will set the most in motion.
Committed
Given for good.
Contributions to the Fund are completed charitable gifts, held permanently for charitable purpose. Capital enters the Fund already committed — ready to move the moment the right institution and the right purpose meet.
Reviewed
Recommended, then confirmed.
The Fund recommends. The sponsor reviews every grant for charitable purpose under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, then issues it. Each commitment arrives carrying two judgments and the full standing of a public charity.
Direct
Paid to the institution.
Payment is made by the sponsor directly to the institution, on a record signed by one of its own officers. The gift arrives whole, promptly, and in the institution's name.
Audited
Under a public standard.
The sponsor is a public charity, independently audited and publicly reporting. Its standards govern every dollar the Fund holds — a discipline the Fund inherits in full and extends to every institution it serves.
The Fund chose this structure because it places an independent fiduciary between intention and disbursement — and because it frees the Fund to give its whole attention to the work.
Why this structure
Latitude, speed, and a protected name.
The Fund is capitalized by established foundations and individual philanthropists whose own giving is, by design, bounded — by program, by geography, by cycle. The advised structure gives that capital a freedom its sources rarely grant themselves: to reach an institution beyond a stated program area; to meet an urgent need at the pace the need sets; and to do both at once, through a structure already standing and ready.
It also protects a name — in both directions. Those who capitalize the Fund remain private, and the Fund asks the same quiet of itself within the institutions it serves. The institution owns the account of its own work entirely, and every gift arrives free of a name to honor or a claim to answer.
Discretion here is a method of giving. Every grant is made for charitable purpose alone, on the sponsor's terms, with funds devoted wholly to the purpose stated. The institution receives the full benefit of the gift and the full credit for the work.
Governance
Judgment, then review, then issue.
Every commitment moves through the same sequence, whatever its size — and arrives with the weight of each step behind it.
01 — Recommendation
It begins in writing.
A commitment begins with the Fund's own research and a written recommendation: the institution, the purpose, the amount, and what the capital is expected to set in motion.
02 — Determination
Two committees, by threshold.
Grants within the Fund's standing authority are determined by its Grants Committee, which confirms each gift in writing. Larger commitments are advanced, with a recommendation, to the Fund's Philanthropy Committee, whose determination is final within the Fund.
03 — Review and issue
The sponsor completes it.
Each determination passes to the sponsor, which reviews it against its charitable-purpose standards and issues the grant directly to the institution. Every gift arrives with the Fund's judgment behind it, confirmed by an independent fiduciary.
Some gifts are made through named initiatives — Practice Multiplied, the Global Forum — each with a stated purpose that guides every grant made in its name.
In practice
A gift arrives as a letter.
What an institution can expect, in order — and how quickly the work can begin.
01
Confirmation in writing
The gift, its amount, its purpose, and the initiative or engagement to which it belongs — stated plainly, and first.
02
A single page
A brief institutional profile, signed by an authorized officer, establishes the record on which the gift is paid. It is the whole of the paperwork, and it is designed to be completed in minutes.
03
Direct payment
Funds are issued by the sponsor to the institution, with the award's terms set out in full. An institution always knows precisely what it has received, for what purpose, and on what terms.
04
The story stays yours
The Fund asks only quiet about its own part — in announcements, donor listings, reports, signage, and media — so the institution tells the story of the work in its own voice, as its own achievement.
Discretion is accountability, placed where it belongs.
With a fiduciary, in writing, under law — and with the institution, in the work.