In preparation for today’s webinar, we asked people what questions were on their minds. My sorting suggests that they fall into five broad categories:

I. What chaos can we expect from new administration?

• What to watch out for in a Trump-lead country and ways to combat these changes?

• What do you see the new administration doing with regard to tax…

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Jeffrey: Back when we did the ratios webinar, I pointed to https://www.cpajournal.com/2019/06/05/using-ratio-analysis-to-manage-not-for-profit-organizations/ because I think it’s a nice overview of measures.

Your Google Scholar search will show you the 30 or so articles from the last couple decades that have gotten down this road, more critical…

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We asked registrants for today’s upcoming webinar to tell us what questions they have about accessing or planning around windfall gifts. What interests you in this topic? We won’t necessarily be able to cover all of this ground in our 90-minute discussion, but below is my sorting of the questions that people are asking. I’d say that the que…

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Orlando: Maybe you’ve already got this downloaded or bookmarked, but the first thing I point to is the IRS instructions. This is 100 pages that they’ve put a lot of work into to make the job as straightforward as possible, even for those of us that aren’t accounting pros.

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i990.pdf

We asked registrants for today’s upcoming webinar to tell us what questions they have about the membership model. What interests you in this topic? We won’t necessarily be able to cover all of this ground in our 90-minute discussion, but here’s my sorting of the questions that people are asking:

Is this for me?

• What steps should an organization…

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Chad: Below is some of the reactions in the chat from our January 30 webinar on individual giving. We’d love to get additional reactions on this question, since organizations wrestle with it all the time. We’ll send this out in our periodic email to see if we can generate more traffic on this —

• We use Neon CRM…. I’m curious what others u…

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In both of the recent NFC webinars on individual giving, we’ve noted the regular increase in aggregate giving while the proportion of Americans making donations declines. More of the donor burden falls to the wealthy and very wealthy. Check out this recent essay from the CEO of the Gates Foundation…

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I’m looking forward to joining the panelists this afternoon and posing some of your questions. I’ve looked through all the questions submitted during registration, and I see seven arenas where more than one person are interested in discussion. Important: The panelists won’t necessarily cover all of this ground. I just like to summarize the direc…

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Nonprofit Financial Commons will host the Permanently Crowdfunding webinar this afternoon at 2pm eastern time. I’ve reviewed and summarized the questions people submitted ahead of the webinar. I’ll be in the chat, and I’ll enter the webinar a couple at a couple points to ask the panelists some questions. I see six categories that multi…

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Gwen: Back when I was writing my graduate thesis (late 1990s), I interviewed a number of nonprofit reps who had been in an organization that had closed down. Sorry to say, I don’t have or know about helpful guidance on costs of closing down. From my recollection of those interviews, this wasn’t a topic that came up much… costs tended to dwindle…

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Michael: I’ve kept one eye on the nonprofit dissolution question the last couple decades, but I can’t say I’ve seen clear legal guidance on what must be kept. The National Council on Nonprofit keeps a pretty nice summary of general considerations…

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<div>Guidance from Claire Axelrad on passing fees on to donors:
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During our recent webinar on FASB’s new lease standards, a number of
participants asked off-topic about how to record and otherwise handle
facilities leases that were provided by local government at essentially
no cost to locally important nonprofits like senior centers, animal
shelters and arts organizations. We have seen a number of these…

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Holly: I don’t think you’ll find this. It’d take some lifting by researchers, and I don’t think there are either thorough or quick/dirty takes on these models as NFC has defined them. The one big source of mission and spending info is from Form 990s, and these would have some limitations in answering your question. For one, there’s no reliable…

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+1 on Wade’s response. This is a colloquial use of “budget” that I avoid precisely because of this confusion. Budget means allocation of resources to strategic aims, but that’s not what people are asking when they say “what’s your budget?” They probably just want to know about how much money you spend in a typical year. They’re just asking about… Read more

From Amy Epstein and Andrea Kihlstedt —

The webinar on cryptocurrency will be held this afternoon. I’ve reviewed and summarized the questions people submitted ahead of the webinar. I’ll be in the chat, and I’ll enter the webinar at the end to ask the panelists some questions. I see five categories:

1. Administration: What platforms are available to accept crypto? What are the start-up c…

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Ron! Sorry that the forums are starting off so slowly… we hope it will ratchet up as the NFC gets more traction. And, ironically enough, start-up traction is right in line with the question you’re asking about. How do you get your nonprofit rolling?

You’ll find a variety of sites that are more geared toward start-up and fundraising… the…

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The webinar on dashboards is starting in the coming hour! As one of the NFC moderators, I’ve reviewed and summarized the questions people submitted ahead of the webinar. They boil down to five main categories:

1. Choosing key performance indicators (KPIs). What are the most critical metrics? What do we benchmark against?

2. Balancing dashboard…

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Short thought piece from J.S. Griffin via NonProfit Pro. I’m thinking that the decision to keep unspent cash depends a good deal on the agreement with the donor, a point that the author doesn’t take up here —

Amanda Cole via NonProfitPRO:

This new article appears to be free (at least temporarily) and not behind a usual paywall. Dan Tinkelman is, in my opinion, in the very top tier of nonprofit accounting scholars. He is a senior statesman for the field.

I have an idea to organize a Nonprofit Financial Commons webinar that gives a handful of nonprofit finance academics the…

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Stephanie Wilson at Blue Avocado–

https://blueavocado.org/finance/endowments/

Thoughtful summary by Marc Pitman on the current giving environment —

Can nonprofits choose any revenues “model” that they want? Maybe not. What you DO might strongly influence what revenue sources you can pursue. Hospitals might not have much option on membership dues. Arts organizations might not have many options on government contracts. To what extent does YOUR nonprofit’s mission determine which revenue sourc… Read more