The year was 1988, and in rural Minnesota during the cold of winter, several dozen sustainable agriculture leaders across the Midwest gathered for the first time to build a policy campaign to address the aftermath of the farm crisis and build a more sustainable future for farmers. This first small gathering contained the seeds of what would eventually become the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition of today: over 170 members, a staff of 18, and decades of legislative achievements in Washington.

Those founding organizations of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, NSAC’s predecessor, made one important early structural decision: they built SAC to operate under fiscal sponsorship. Fiscal sponsorship is a nonprofit organizing structure where a project or initiative is housed by a parent nonprofit, which provides administrative support and a pathway to receive funding. Little did …

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