The Head & the Hand Press, located in Kensington, is both an independent publisher and a community-based writers workshop. Until recently, both sides of the business were operating as a for-profit.

Now, using an innovative form of fiscal sponsorship, the workshop side of the company will operate as a nonprofit while the rest of the business remains for-profit.

Founder of H&H Press, Nic Esposito, explained in a press release that the change in structure will allow the workshop program to accept grants and donations. This will take the pressure off H&H Press to maintain and expand the workshop with its own financial resources .

“H&H [Press] chose to do this because our workshop is an extremely important part of our existence, but basically a loss leader in our business,” Esposito wrote in an email to Generocity.

He added that the workshop is especially important because it develops local writers and gets them closer to the goal of publishing their work.  In effect, this could create clients for H&H Press.

The service that allows for this hybrid model was developed by CultureTrust Greater Philadelphia, which is an affiliate of CultureWorks, the Center City co-working space.  CultureTrust provides back-office resources for projects without organizational capacity or official nonprofit status.

This includes “fundraising, governance, accounting, contracting, bill paying, insurance, payroll/human resource management, and project management,” according to the CultureTrust website.

CultureTrust is also unique in that it does not charge a fixed-fee. Instead it charges 12 percent of a project’s revenues, whether earned or contributed, so a project is only charged when there is financial activity.

With this support system, Esposito said, H&H Press can continue to build the community of Philadelphia writers through the workshop while working towards making its publishing business profitable.

(Image via mindingthecampus.org)

Disclosure: Nic Esposito, founder of H&H Press, is also a monthly columnist for Generocity.org