In my experience, if the grant specifies how funds can be allocated to particular staff or expenses, those restrictions would generally be treated as grant conditions. It’s also worth checking the grant agreement and your organization’s accounting policy to confirm the correct treatment.

In my view, the release should generally follow the purpose of the donor restriction. Amounts can be released as eligible construction and outfitting costs are incurred rather than waiting until the building is placed in service. The key FASB guidance is ASC 958-205-45-9. This addresses the release of donor-imposed restrictions when the specified…

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Congratulations on completing the REDF Accelerator! It’s a great way to strengthen your QuickBooks Online setup. Project tracking could make grant reporting and financial decision-making much easier. I suggest you look for a nonprofit accounting professional. It should be a professional who understands social enterprises and fund accounting,…

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I agree that sharing real experiences from the nonprofit sector is valuable. This is because policymakers need to understand how these decisions affect organizations and the communities they serve. Staying connected with the National Council of Nonprofits and state-level associations can give nonprofits a stronger voice while helping them prepare…

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What should donors look at when evaluating a charity’s financial health beyond simply checking its overhead percentage? How important are factors such as financial reserves, revenue stability, program spending, debt, and transparency when deciding whether a nonprofit is financially trustworthy? I would be interested to hear what financial…

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From my experience, creating a pricing model isn’t easy. But doing some basic things can help achieve the objectives. I would recommend using a full-cost pricing model that separates direct costs like meals, rooms, facilities, and program staff from allocated overhead. Then calculate the total cost per participant and add a reasonable margin or…

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Post-award reporting can be a real challenge when finance, grants, and program teams have to coordinate data from different systems. A short survey like this could provide useful insight into where the biggest reporting bottlenecks occur and what teams actually need. I would be particularly interested in seeing whether the responses point to…

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I find myself lucky to stumble on this thread and even more, the comment of Sara. I have also been looking for how to verify nonprofits. I have used all the suggestions made here, and they are all gold.

Meanwhile, I stumbled on two API tools that offer an automated way of verifying nonprofits. The one of interest to me is the Nonprofit Check Plus…

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This is an important distinction that many nonprofit leaders may overlook, especially when relying on standard IRS guidance for governance policies. Organizations should view the IRS sample conflict of interest policy as a starting point while ensuring their policies address broader statutory requirements and sector-specific risks. It would be…

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I would appreciate having a link to the recorded session.

I am a compliance officer with a very small budget and am looking for ways to automate some of my work processes to speed things up. A task that really takes my time is nonprofit verification. I would appreciate suggestions that will help automate this process.

Most parts of the executive order are pretty cool. I don’t think we will have any issue with that from our end.

Yes, we went through this some years ago (established a NICRA with our cognizant agency). A few things that helped:

• Confirm your cognizant agency first: for most nonprofits it’s HHS (Division of Cost Allocation) or your largest federal funder if HHS isn’t it. This determines who you’re actually negotiating with.
• 2 CFR 200 Appendix IV is your bible…

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A few colleagues have also reported this vague “risk” language with no specifics, right around orgs with equity-focused missions. Try documenting the denial in writing and asking for the underwriting criteria they used. If they can’t produce one, that’s telling. Another suggestion is to look at mission-aligned or nonprofit-specific processors…

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Hi Jamie,

Based on what you’ve described, there are a few separate issues here: state nonprofit status, federal tax-exempt status, and disclosure requirements. A California nonprofit corporation is not automatically a federally tax-exempt organization, so the organization can have been incorporated in California without ever receiving IRS…

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The first call is to ensure that all your marketing ideas are assigned a timeline and a success metric. You will find it difficult to track success if it can’t be measured or assigned.