Finance and Governance

More updates from the Smithsonian scandal, another big nonprofit in the news with stories about how much the top two people were paid and how little they did to earn the $$.

The Nonprofit Times has an article here on it. The Nonprfit Quarterly talks about the story as well and the editor in chief, Ruth McCambridge makes a good point:

With the changes to the 990 reflecting the efforts of the Senate and the IRS to get better governance out of nonprofits, shouldn't they hold the Smithsonian Board, and the other big nonprofits who have been in the news for the wrong reasons, to the same standards? That board includes the Chief Justice of the United States and half a dozen members of Congress.

Shall they be exempt from being taken to task for what all who look at the case cite as a failure of governance? It will be interesting to see how this moves forward.

CAN's Employment Center

Not an accounting post but a heads up out there for people looking for work. CAN has created a new Career Center on its website. So check it out and let me know what you think.

More on the New 990

Well some of the first criticisms of the new IRS form 990 are up. I'm interested to know what you think about what the president of Charity Navigator has to say.

I have some initial thoughts on the core form. I like the summary section of part 1. It lays out the more important aspects of the form in a fairly straight forward way, what the casual reader of a 990 really will want to see. We do still need a way to educate readers on what the information means, maybe a new Peter Swords book?

Overall the form feels easier to understand and grasp. The Parts have an ordered feel to their layout, every part is a complete section. The form is longer by page count but it goes faster.

Some questions that came up during the first go through:

• Part I number 8b, what is it trying to show? What is a “good” metric? I don’t think that benchmark needs to be on the form.
• Part I number 9, if there is no other explanation a person who doesn’t understand how a NP operates numbers here may make them think the NP is doing something wrong. I don’t see a reason for listing 9 on the summary page, don’t see what it serves in the big picture.
• Part I number 15, if this is a larger number it could at first glance be a bit misleading.
• Part IV number 1f, “gifts grants,” what does that mean? Typo?
• Part V number 23, great! I like the added criteria, forces people to not be lazy.

I’ll list more as I come across them upon more in depth reading.

Draft Redesigned Form 990

It is finally out. The idea is to use this form for the 2008 tax year, so one would be filling this out in 2009.

You can check out all the information here, you will be able to download a copy of the new form, read about the changes and send in comments. All the forms and info is in PDF format.

[EDIT] I have assembled the most pertinent forms into one file to download, the IRS site lists all 20 plus informational sheets, forms and schedules as individual downloads. New stuff and info about the new stuff is all put together here. Its about two megabytes, about a minute and a half to download with a good connection.

This is a big redo, and YOU have the opportunity to comment on it! I'll post my thought about the new form soon.

Alan

Another Accounting Boot Camp...

On July 13th in Orange County, click the links for more details about all the offerings including an accounting boot camp!

Non Profit Summer School

Update Your QuickBooks Database Server Manager

If anybody reading this is using QuickBooks 2007 it looks like you need to do an update for its database. All versions of QuickBooks has an auto update feature (that you all are using, right?) but this update is NOT included in that for some reason

From what I can tell only QuickBooks 2007 is affected, not other versions as this is a new database system for the 2007 product. This affects data sharing (for multiple users or if you have the data stored on another computer than the one you are using) so its a good idea to grab this update ASAP.

This article from PC Magazine gives you the low down on how to update it. I subscribe to their security watch email updates, full of useful stuff if you have to work with technology.