Forward Global is a 30-year-old philanthropic support organization that decided to enter fiscal sponsorship a few years ago. That decision only became possible because of modern technology and infrastructure. With Mazlo, Forward Global's lean fiscal sponsorship team grew from 6 active projects to 35 in 18 months and launched a $1M+ rapid-response campaign in days. Today, Forward Global actively advises other projects to evaluate any fiscal sponsor by looking at the technology behind its operations.
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growth in active projects (18 months)
rapid-response campaign raised
projects supported by 1.5 FTE
Forward Global supports a community of wealth holders and social impact leaders mobilizing resources for a more thriving, sustainable, and equitable world. For three decades, they worked mostly in the background, bringing best practices and greater efficiency to philanthropy through its members, rather than by running programs directly.
Then, two years ago, Forward Global made a strategic decision: add fiscal sponsorship as a service. The team believed the sector did not need a thousand new nonprofits. It needed shared backend infrastructure that could help many projects operate at much lower administrative cost.
As Rachel Simon, Forward Global's Chief Operating Officer, put it, “We can have these shared backend resources that will allow lots of nonprofits to function at a significantly lower administrative cost to bring more projects, more work into the world, faster.”
But fiscal sponsorship would only work if technology could handle work that staff could not take on manually. Forward Global started with an alternative financial platform but the fit wasn't there. When that platform was acquired, Forward Global re-evaluated and moved to Mazlo.
“Most of the frustrations and issues we were having, we just kind of assumed we had to deal with,” Rachel said. “Mazlo had solved for most of them.”
Mazlo became the operational backbone of Forward Global's fiscal sponsorship practice. Every project now has 24/7 self-service access to their own data: balances, donor lists, transaction history, donation campaign performance, without having to email staff and wait days for manual reconciliation.
“When I meet other projects and talk to them about potentially being fiscally sponsored, I tell all of them: you can sponsor with any organization you want, but ask what technology they're using. In 2026, there shouldn't be any fiscal sponsors still doing this manually,” said Rachel.
Mazlo's flexibility also opened up new ways of working. Projects can run multiple donation campaigns under one account, letting different work streams and teams fundraise separately. A custom chart of accounts and an easy-to-use interface made it simpler to onboard new projects. The team also created a more predictable operating rhythm, reducing repeat questions, confusion, and delays.
The impact continued to build over time. Forward Global's fiscal sponsorship practice grew from 6 active projects in 2024 to nearly 35 in early 2026. That was roughly 6x growth in 18 months, achieved with the same team and no marketing efforts.
With Mazlo, Forward Global built and scaled a modern fiscal sponsorship practice without adding unnecessary administrative burden.
In response to a tragic, unexpected event, one of Forward Global's projects needed to launch a rapid-response fundraising campaign. Within a few days, the campaign was live on Mazlo. The project received thousands of small donations in the $10 to $50 range, along with larger donor-advised fund gifts of $10,000, $50,000, and $100,000. In under a year, the project raised over $1 million.
That kind of campaign sat outside Forward Global's traditional comfort zone. Historically, the organization had worked with a small number of large donors, not thousands of small ones.
“We wouldn't have been able to meet that moment without Mazlo already being set up to do it,” Rachel said.
Modern infrastructure isn't just an efficiency gain at Forward Global. It's the precondition for supporting complex financial operations.
Forward Global is a philanthropic support organization that supports a community of wealth holders and social impact leaders. Together, they mobilize resources for a thriving, sustainable, and equitable world.