Hi Sherri

I attended a webinar last year that was helpful in this area and thought I’d share the slide deck with you. The background information you may be looking for begins around page 16: https://www.forvismazars.us/getattachment/f22d074d-9024-47a5-b5a9-482d9f9074d0/Internal-Controls-Working-From-Home-Learning-Materials.pdf.

Hi Sean and Dave, and thanks for participating in the forum! Not knowing all the specifics, I would see the restricted funds as going to the cost of producing the books (as well as any related costs like administration of the donation, shipping, etc). If the donors were donating the books as an in-kind contribution you would value that at the…

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Hi Laura

Thanks for visiting the forum! Propel Nonprofits has a great document and tool that can help you get started. It can be found on our website here: https://nonprofitfinancials.org/resources/true-program-costs-program-budget-and-allocation-template-and-resource-2/

Thanks Jerry, for your question, and Cheryl, for participating in the forum! We just want to be sure that you mean rental as an income or an expense?

Hi Janet…thanks so much for posting to the forum! Indeed, this is technical and uncharted territory as we work to implement this new standard. We look forward to hearing from other forum members on their experiences. To ensure your question gets to the greatest number of your peers, it will be pushed out to the forum membership in our weekly…

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Hi Donald…welcome to the forum!

Your calculation looks consistent with that used in this cool template that is available on our site: https://nonprofitfinancials.org/resources/calculate-your-luna/.

Also, if you weren’t able to join us recently for our webinar on financial ratios – which included discussion of LUNA – you can access the materials…

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Hello everyone! We are excited to learn about upcoming revisions (effective 10/1/24) to OMB guidance on Federal grantmaking which among other things will raise the de minimis rate from 10% to 15%, raise the single audit threshold from $750K to $1 million, and favor up-front payments rather than reimbursements. All in all, these revisions appear to…

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Hi Erica…as I work through understanding LUNA and its related calculations I, like you, also encounter these wrinkles and exceptions! My reaction would be to exclude in-kind expense since it is not a cash need and therefore not reliant on LUNA to fund. Any other reactions out there?

Greetings fellow forum members! If you joined us on Tuesday for our webinar on Nonprofit Financial Ratios, we hope you’ll agree that it was an informative and lively session. If you were unable to join us, please check out the recording and materials in the Webinars section of the site.

There were a lot of questions and discussions in the chat d…

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Thanks everyone for your insightful responses. Please continue to visit our forums to keep this and other great discussions going!

Hi Rick.. thanks for reaching out to our forum! This is a question I receive quite often and I have to say it’s no easy task since you are looking for folks with a specific area of expertise who are also interested in (hopefully passionate about!) the organization’s mission. You would want to start with the networks surrounding your fellow board…

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Thanks so much for your post, Sage. Great feedback about avoiding the siloing effect! Looking forward to hearing others’ perspectives.

Hello NFC Community!

During our Individual Giving webinar on Tuesday the chat lit up with your opinions, recommendations, and warnings about the different Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and donor management platforms that you use in your organizations. We’d love to keep that conversation going here in the forum! Specifically, could you…

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Hi Mary Ellen

I feel your pain as well! While QBO certainly solved connectivity issues for so many organizations that went remote in 2020 a lot of folks are having the same reaction as you are. I really like Desktop payroll for its ability to allocate costs between classes and customers which eases our task of not only functional allocations but…

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Hi Gwen…you’re right, there doesn’t appear to be anything I can easily get my hands on either. I have been through a closure in years past and these are the items that come to mind, though I’m sure there are more that others may name: legal fees to dissolve the corporation and settle any other claims, preparation fees for the final Form 990,…

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Hi Michael and Mark…I have been through this – twice! – and we followed the same retention periods that were in place when the organization was in operation, maxing out at 7 years. I was surprised by how often we did need to access records in the years following dissolution. In regards to storage, that was the hard part and we were able to rely…

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Hi Holly…you ask a good question and just happen to be stumbling upon a fellow North Carolinian! I have generally seen more organizations opt to pay into the fund rather than to self insure simply to reduce the potential for large payments when claims are filed by terminated employees.

In North Carolina, the annual cost to pay into the fund…

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Hi Tony, and thanks for coming to the Forum! My inclination would be to allocate based on how the individual worked when they were employed by the organization whether or not they were actually on the payroll that year. I look forward to hearing other opinions as well!

Thanks everyone for replying and helping Kara navigate this question! I appreciate your pointing out the effect it can have on employees who may need lead time and help adjusting to the new schedule.

Hi Kara…in my experience as a Finance Director I actually liked the change to biweekly payroll with the lag (e.g. a Friday pay date for the two week period ending the preceding Friday). It gives time for review and if you have hourly employees you are able to accurately capture the hours from their timesheets. Also helpful to have those actuals…

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Good Morning Everyone!

Yesterday, Gina McDonald led a very informative webinar surrounding the new FASB standard for lease accounting. The recording and slides will soon be available on this site but in the meantime, in addition to the insights shared in the webinar by Ellie O’Brien from Propel Nonprofits, we’d love to hear directly from you about…

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Hi Caroline….thanks for coming to the Forum! In a Statement of Activities presented in accordance with GAAP, the release of restricted revenues is a reclass from the “With Donor Restrictions” column to the “Without Donor Restrictions” column with no net effect on the bottom line in the “Total” column. That said, it’s an important element of how…

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Hi Susie…that is a question I so frequently receive! My interpretation is that it is the total expense of an organization. So, depending on the time frame asked, it could be your budgeted expenses for the current year or your actual expenses for the prior year.

Any other forum members get this same confusion?

Hi Bob…and please accept my apologies for our delay in responding to your post! While others may have different opinions, I have found that Excel works best for me in building budgets. It is of course the least expensive alternative as well. Also, we have plans for the near future to dive deeper into budgeting in an upcoming webinar. Stay tuned!

What challenges do you have in your organization in terms of business model and what might be some takeaways from our webinar that may help you?