Working with NOPI has been an incredible experience. Their support, guidance, and resources have been instrumental in helping our organization grow and thrive. The staff is dedicated and genuinely invested in our success.
As someone who has worked in the nonprofit sector for nearly 20 years, I feel a responsibility to share our experience with NOPI so that other organizations can make informed decisions.
When we entered into fiscal sponsorship with NOPI, we were upfront about our goal to secure 501(c)(3) status as quickly as possible. We were hopeful for a partnership that would offer stability, professionalism, and support. Unfortunately, that’s not what we received.
Here are just some of the issues we encountered:
• Double-charged administrative fees — 50% of our grants were overcharged, resulting in NOPI taking thousands of dollars more than agreed upon. Our team had to identify and correct these errors repeatedly, with no clear explanation or accountability from NOPI.
• Blank financial reports — We were sent multiple reports as blank Excel sheets, even while over $100,000 of our funds were being held.
• Unannounced daily spending limits — We were never informed about these limits and only discovered them after transactions failed. This meant we didn’t have access to our own funds when needed and had to pay out of our personal accounts just to keep things running.
• Delayed vendor payments — Because NOPI managed our disbursements, we had no choice but to rely on them to pay our vendors. Several vendors waited more than six weeks to be paid, damaging our relationships and credibility.
• Frequent operational disruptions — Cancelled office hours, multiple financial platform changes, and inconsistent communication created ongoing delays and confusion for our small team.
• Lack of mutual accountability — While NOPI enforced all aspects of the contract on our end, they did not uphold the same standard themselves. Several of their own responsibilities were either not met or changed without notice.
• Loss of Instrumentl access — Access to Instrumentl, a grant-searching platform we could not afford independently and one of the main reasons we chose NOPI, was changed or revoked without notice—cutting us off from a tool critical to our growth.
Despite all this, when we formally requested that NOPI waive the final $5,000 administrative fee—given their acknowledgment that actual admin costs were minimal and the significant imbalance in services provided—they declined.
When we returned and asked again for them to make things right, they did agree to reimburse $2,500, which we genuinely appreciated. However, that amount is a small fraction of what we believe we were owed—especially considering that we did not receive valuable support from this partnership. Instead, we feel that NOPI took advantage of our organization and, by extension, took from the very clients we serve—cancer patients who are already struggling with mental health challenges.
In my consulting work, at least five organizations have asked about fiscal sponsorship with NOPI. I’ve shared this experience honestly and have advised each of them to look elsewhere. I would never work with NOPI again.
There are more cost-effective, more professional, and more compassionate ways to launch a nonprofit. I truly hope others don’t have to go through what we did.
NOPI has provided substantial support for everything I have needed thus far in my nonprofit work. I don't think I would have not gotten this far without them. They are so attentive and supportive of my needs and everything I have asked for and I truly appreciate them for that.
NOPI is an incredible organization that has provided me with so much support. Without their support, I would be unable to make the impact I am having in my community. They are thoughtful, compassionate, and professional. So grateful!
NOPI is absolutely the best. My little group could not have gotten as far as we have without their help and guidance. What they do is important, and they put their hearts into it.
They've been fantastic -- super helpful and supportive with our small and very new organization. We are about to launch and absolutely could not have made this happen without NOPI.
NOPI has been so supportive and helpful while our (rather big and complicated!) project - Queer Liberation Library - gets off the ground. Without them, this project would’ve taken so much longer to come to fruition, and their help has been incalculable. They are always able to answer our questions and willing to put in the extra time and effort to help us out. We’re getting started on stable ground thanks to The NOPI and it’ll make our project sustainable! Thank you all so much!
Working with NOPI has been a blessing! They're the people who help people help people! My organization would be a year or more behind where we are now without the fiscal sponsorship and technical assistance of NOPI. We've built a complex product to share with a niche group of people and NOPI has helped guide us the whole way. We're looking forward to a continued partnership!
Amanda and the NOPI team are amazing! They provide soup to nut services and have helped me launch our NGO. Highly recommend them!
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NOPI has been an integral part of helping us to build our program. We started with nothing and Amanda and her team have gone out of their way to ensure our new program has the resources and knowledge we need in order to be successful. The NOPI team has a wide background and are some of the leading experts in their respective areas. They have assisted our program with financial management and budgeting, resource procurement and acquisition, volunteer and advisory board recruitment and management, as well as a host of other services. I would recommend partnering with NOPI to anyone looking to create (or expand) their non-profit services.
We have a good working relationship with NOPI as a fiscal sponsor. They provide the expected support we need as we navigate fundraising. Would recommend to a startup nonprofit.
Fantastic! Amanda is an absolute expert. We are so grateful to work with her and collaborate with her as we launch our Summer 2023 program.
Families Creating Together is a small Arts program focused on children with disabilities. We had a limited fiscal agent that just held our funds and not much else. NOPI is now giving us a full service sponsorship that is helping us grow our program and easing the stress of administrative duties.
NOPI has been extremely influential in helping me become the best nonprofit CEO I can be. I met with a representative from NOPI today and she was AMAZING! I felt very comfortable and encouraged. I came out knowing exactly what I needed to know and it was incredible.
NOPI is wonderful . Their team offers patience, understanding, and education to nonprofit organizations.
I've been working for NOPI for a few months now and I can honestly say It's become one of my favorite and most rewarding jobs. The effort they put into the Non-profits they work with is amazing. The care that they have for all of their employees is something you rarely see in the workforce. They value a healthy work environment while trying to make the world a better place.
Nopi began working with our organization a year ago during a time of organizational transition and after the pandemic had impacted us greatly. Their team immediately prioritized what we needed to work on first and provided the guidance and support we needed to take us into our next steps. Nopi has grown with us as our needs have increased and the Nopi team is now handling many aspects of our business. Helping with the day-to-day business has allowed our otherwise all volunteer organization to focus on board responsibilities and programming. Nopi's patience, understanding, and knowledge have been invaluable. As the Board President, I look at our organization's future with more confidence, less stress, and increased optimism because of Nopi. I recommend Nopi to any nonprofit in a season of transition, growth, crisis, or in early stages of development.
Our organization, Be Inclusive Inc, is just starting out. The founder and I had no prior experience with starting a nonprofit or nonprofit management - we just had a great idea and wanted to create a nonprofit organization around that idea. NOPI has assisted us in the process in so many ways! From Fiscal Sponsorship to consultation to website development to connection to resources. We would not have made as much progress as we have without NOPI’s help!
NOPI’s mission is noble and needed! The assistance given to nonprofits strengthens the industry and gives backing to the community services and organizations integral to improving our world!
NOPI stepped in to fiscally sponsor our small non-profit start-up during a critical time! The team was so helpful in offering advice, resources, and infrastructure critical to our success. From advice on fundraising and grant-writing to developing our leadership team, we couldn't have accomplished what we did in such a short time without them. Thanks to Amanda and the whole NOPI team!
AmandaLaFleur 10/15/2021
It was an honor to help your project in its mission! It was incredible to watch your army of volunteers in action and how effective the process was to those individuals needing assistance.
Great organization with a meaningful mission and dedicated staff. They were a pleasure to work and set clear measurable goals. Also kind and caring people with a good company culture.
Amanda was instrumental in helping our organization with all start-up requirements. She was very knowledgeable and efficient when it came to the organization's non-profit obligations. She and her staff were very supportive. I have sent several people to NOPI to obtain their services.
NOPI supported my NonProfit with web design, advice on spinning off a program of ours into its own nonprofit and absolutely phenominal help in creating a web-based virtual conference for our community. The desire to support and collaborate is clear in their team members. Plus the organization clearly has a focus on equitable access to their services. We are thankful for their support.
I am one of NOPI's Social Social media content creation interns since August 2021 and I have come a long way in terms of skills and navigating through the different tools and platforms that NOPI uses for their social media and for the social media of the nonprofit organizations that they provide fiscal sponsorship to. And that is mostly because of the guidance from diverse teams that we have in NOPI. They give relevant notes every time they do a review for the posts that I schedule for them.
I've noticed that we were doing tasks that are more geared towards promoting the nonprofit organizations that NOPI provides fiscal sponsorship to rather than focusing on work to promote NOPI's own social media profiles which, for me, is a clear indication that NOPI is dedicated and has passion in helping and giving support to these organizations. This led me to think that NOPI plays a major role in helping these organizations thrive.
NOPI has one advocacy which is to provide support in the form of fiscal sponsorship and technical assistance to other nonprofit organizations but if we really dig deep into what NOPI has done for the community, we would come to realize that NOPI has helped almost everyone from different community sectors - Healthcare, Mental Health, employment, housing, education, and etc.
NOPI - Nonprofit Incubator is an organization with a heart. From pro-bono services to handing out scholarships to their webinars, NOPI - Nonprofit Incubator cares about helping people no matter whether they have the money needed for services or not. This is a company that I would like to work with for the rest of my life.
This cause is something that never goes out of style: people helping people, or in this case, nonprofits helping nonprofits. The work that NOPI does will set an example for those who wish to see causes they believe in succeed. With accessibility-minded consultation services for a vast array of scenarios, NOPI's staff provides meaningful assistance to nonprofits looking to advance their mission and vision, but may lack the necessary help to do so. NOPI is not simply the helping hand, but also the fortified core of philanthropic care, and where the rubber meets the road on the often-bumpy road to success.