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Up Front — Your Nonprofit Consultant
Archive for the ‘Nonprofit Accounting & Finance’ Category
“Report me and my cause aright”*: Filing the RRF-1 and the S-100
November 6th, 2012
by Peter R. McGrath Reports are part of daily life for all businesses. For nonprofits there are some important reports that help distinguish how healthy the charity is and whether it is a good candidate for giving. Following is a list of two reports with links that must be kept up-to-date for all nonprofits in [...]
Starting Your Nonprofit Checklist Part III: Form 1023
July 5th, 2012
by Spencer Doyle Part III: Create your IRS-required 5-year fundraising plan. Complete your IRS filing requirements. Form 1023. Know your foundations. “Touch”your donors 5 times throughout the year. 2-3 “asks,” followed by acknowledgements, thank you letters, and progress reports. Follow the 3-day turnaround. Send acknowledgement letters no more than three days after receiving gifts. Be [...]
Starting Your Nonprofit Checklist Part I: Mission First
June 28th, 2012
by Spencer Doyle Part I: Start with your mission first. You want to make sure that your mission-your vision-is shared by those who are helping you start your nonprofit. You can’t do it alone! So your FIRST STEP should really be to articulate your mission together. This process will help you write your mission more [...]
Avoiding Nonprofit Embezzlement in 8 Steps
May 21st, 2012
by Janet Smith I had lunch recently with a friend who shared many dire experiences with nonprofit embezzlement in her 30 plus years in accounting. She told stories of top level managers who were not doing proper oversight and were oblivious to the problems, managers who were themselves involved in the misappropriation of funds, as [...]
“Mind Your Business” E-newsletter from My Dutch Uncle Now Available
March 30th, 2012
by Spencer Doyle Today My Dutch Uncle delivered the first issue of its new e-newsletter, Mind Your Business: News Nonprofits Can Use. Designed to bring nonprofits the business knowledge and insights they need to accomplish their missions, Mind Your Business will feature stories about our amazing clients plus strategies and tips from our staff’s many [...]
My Dutch Uncle Staff Expands
March 23rd, 2012
by Spencer Doyle Over the last few months, the My Dutch Uncle team has nearly doubled in size, with new hires and veteran associates joining the staff. Long-time associate and finance guru Janet Smith has been named Controller, and grant writer Cristina Bailey also transitioned from associate to the post of Manager, Research & Grant [...]
So Why Do They Call It “Petty” Cash?
February 21st, 2012
by Janet Smith Webster’s defines petty as 1. of little importance; trivial. 2. (of behavior) Characterized by an undue concern for trivial matters, esp. in a small-minded or spiteful way. To the bookkeeper there is nothing small-minded, trivial, or spiteful about petty cash. (The name actually comes from a corruption of petite, meaning small.) And [...]
IRS Mileage Rate Increase
July 10th, 2011
by Janet Smith Many nonprofit organizations use the standard IRS mileage rates to reimburse employee business-related mileage expenses. For those of you filling out your monthly travel expense vouchers, or monitoring your organization’s annual travel budget, take note that at the end of June, the Internal Revenue Service announced an increase in the standard mileage rates [...]
Good Governance Brings a Smile to Your Revenue Agent
June 28th, 2011
by Peter R. McGrath Once you’ve completed your annual reporting on Form 990, you mail it off to the IRS and, if everything is OK, you never hear anything. Yet all those 990s do get looked at carefully by revenue agents. Recently, the IRS released a set of guidelines it expects agents to use when [...]
Treat Your Tax-Exempt Status Like Gold
June 24th, 2011
by Peter R. McGrath Most people have a tendency to see the world from their own point of view. This truism was evident at a recent briefing I attended on the federal reporting Form 990 and all its pomps and works. Midway through the presentation on current and future changes to this reporting tool the [...]
