Unrestricted Funds

Bridge Foundry generally only accepts unrestricted donations. We ask that chapters and communities within our network explain this to donors appropriately.

What is an unrestricted donation?

"Unrestricted" funds are donations a nonprofit may use for any purpose. When donations are made to Bridge Foundry for a specific program, chapter, community, or purpose, we do set aside those funds for the intended purpose. We communicate up front with donors that the funds are unrestricted just in case funds need to be reallocated down the road.

If I donate money to support a specific event or community, why would it go elsewhere?

We have a very small part-time staff and all of our work is accomplished by volunteers, student participants and independent communities who use our open source materials. When a volunteer raises funds with the goal of enabling a local community, we have processes in place to support that specific local community using those funds as much as possible; however, we do not formally restrict those funds to allow for flexibility if more money is raised than needed for a specific event (so volunteers can use it for a future event), for those rare cases where an active local volunteer might move away with no successor, or for other circumstances that make it impractical for us to spend funds as originally designated. There may be a very active volunteer elsewhere who could make a big impact with those funds, and if that ever were to happen, then we would want you to support that without needing to contact you to discuss the change. Our goal is to be 100% transparent, and all of our finances are open; however, tracking and reporting all these details for a very unlikely event doesn’t seem a great use of our resources.

What if I really want my donation to be restricted?

If your willingness to donate is contingent on restricting the funds, please contact us at finance@bridgefoundry.org and we will be happy to discuss it with you. We can consider setting this up for larger donations that enable us to allocate staff time to ensure support for specific initiatives.