NonprofitEye

New Feature! Nonprofit Trend of the Week Nonprofit Innovations disclaimer: this is NOT a plug - please read to end of article for pro's and con's! A friend introduced me to a for-profit product that dovetails well with nonprofit values. Produced by GiveWell.com , the product itself is called the "Healthcare Gift Card". There are pros and cons (discussed below), but first, what is it? Givewell bills itself as: ...a new way to help employees cover health and wellness costs. It is designed to encourage healthy living and staying well. Employees can use it to cover a variety of healthcare costs including co-pays at doctor’s offices and pharmacies or for vision care, dental care, health club memberships and elective procedures at businesses that accept Visa debit cards. Pros Giftwell tells us that Because the Healthcare Gift Card is targeted to work only with health and wellness providers, you can be assured your gift card will be used as a “gift of health.” Better t...

You've been waiting for it (dreading it?) and now it's here. Get ready, the IRS has announced the release of the revised Form 990 (complete with schedules A - R)! How many years have we been hearing the rumblings about excessive compensation? about professional fundraisers? about risk management? about enhanced transparency? Well, the pavement has met the road folks. Read the IRS announcement here . Effective for the 2008 tax year (returns filed in 2009), the revised form will be phased in over a three year period for smaller organizations. The revision reflects many changes since the draft was released (the IRS received more than 650 public comments!!!) For the 2008 tax year (returns filed in 2009), organizations with gross receipts over $1.0 million or total assets over $2.5 million will be required to file the Form 990. For the 2009 tax year (returns filed in 2010), organizations with gross receipts over $500,000 or total assets over $1.25 million will be required ...

I came across this item in OMB's comments to the IRS (in response to the revised 990): Federal agencies provide over $450 billion in government grants annually; a substantial portion of which goes to nonprofit organizations. No deep thoughts today, just this: That's BILLIONS not millions. That's a lot of change. Let's use it to make a difference! Technorati Tags: Government Grants , Federal Funding , Nonprofit Funding , Nonprofit

Leave it to a nonprofit accountant to write about tax-time instead of Christmas Cheer and Silver Bells! Seems like only yesterday I was writing about holiday fundraising appeals, but it turns out another year has flown by! Here's a re-cap on tax-exempt giving: The Nonprofit Eye on IRS Regs, Tis The Season to Be Giving sixtyPercent on the great Tax Advantages of Giving Gifts of Stock Beth Kanter's posts on Fundraising Widgets and on Donor Documentation and let's not forget the IRS's own roundup of Tax-Exempt Giving Technorati Tags: Charitable Giving , Donations , Nonprofit , Tax Exempt Donation

Following the old adage "write about what you know", today's focus is job hunting! One great part of working in the nonprofit sector is how many industry specific job rags there are to choose from. If you asked me where to look I'd say (in no particular order): "Opportunity Nocs, Nonprofit Oyster, Idealist, Chronicle of Philanthropy". But there is so much more: Idealist.org A project of Action Without Borders, global clearinghouse of nonprofit resources, including jobs, internships, mailing lists, and nonprofit resources by state & country. Opportunity NOCS A resource for nonprofit jobs and employment opportunities. Nonprofit Oyster Offers job postings for meaningful career opportunities, and the ability for job seekers to post their profiles online for employers to access. They donate 5% of their profits to support nonprofits whose missions are particularly close to their hearts. Craig's List, Nonprofit Jobs Bay Area based community bul...

One thing that's great about my recent unemployment? Time to read. And reading means exposure to new ideas. And new ideas mean inspiration. Hurray. Take two articles, the first David Brook's article "The Organization Kid", from way back in April, 2001 (remember when that was the science fiction future?) and another, Andrew Keen's article " Web 2.0 The second generation of the Internet has arrived. It's worse than you think. " from February, 2006. Isn't it great when information converges over time? First, credit where credit's due. These came to my attention from two blogs I read regularly (thanks to RSS!), the penny for your thoughts blog " 1cent talk on nptech " and " Urban Community ". They are two great reasons to keep browsing the blogosphere! "The Organization Kid" paints a frightening picture of a new generation so conformist and content that they have become complacent, obedient even bland. Compare...

R eprint: originally titled "The Dearth of Nonprofit Thought" posted on NetSquared It's time to strike up a conversation backed by sound research, philosophy and experience. How is it we don't have our own "Wall Street Journal" by now? So much of the real estate space in nonprofit rags is devoted to a) our own salaries; b) how to raise money; or c) what nifty new accounting software we should buy. I launched the Nonprofit Eye to do my part - kickoff some discussion on real stuff, like revenue recognition , the meaning of charity , the hazards of promising too much, the oxymoron of performance outcomes , etc. etc. Join in, viva la revolution! Technorati Tags: Nonprofit Philosophy , Charity

The short answer? Yes (now you don't have to read the rest of the article!). In search of the holy grail of blogging (search engine optimization), I employed techniques suggested by the experts and, voila! I: Decreased my bounce rate Increased my stickiness Increased my unique page visits Achieved a better goal conversation rate (more on that later since I'm not converting anything to sales) Got more subscribers Got a higher Google Page ranking moved up in the Google search results In essence, everyone who's questing after SEO's dream. So what's the problem? Sigh. I killed my joy of writing, I left my own goals (not Googles) in the dust. First, I narrowed my focus. My analysis showed most visitors were coming to read technical articles on accounting and compliance. I added more paths: from these frequently visited pages to other similar articles from the home page to a directory of similar articles from the home page to specific follow-up pi...

Working in the nonprofit sector it's easy to forget about the resources in the for-profit world. So today, I'm going to recommend poking our heads out into the sun once in a while. I sat down to read a copy of CFO magazine. I figured it wouldn't have a lot to relate to, but was I wrong. Keep in mind no endorsement received, I love this rag! One article in particular, Finance in History: Here's to the Bean Counters: A slur to finance folks and accountants, the term has a noble past by R.G. Voorhee s captured my imagination. I won't quote it away, but just give you the opening paragraph (emphasis mine): "Bean counting" has long been an insulting term for what finance professionals and accountants do. Often, it's been used to tar CFOs as transaction processors—a role largely relegated to the back office . What's more, people like to use the phrase to ratchet up the pedestrian aspects of finance by tagging practitioners as "mere"...

Last week, in MISSION WITHOUT I.T. IS LIKE A DAY WITHOUT SUNSHINE I set out to write  ROI, but before I'd finished my first paragraph, I had revealed my own flawed organizational paradigm. Allan Benamer contributed a critically important comment: IT is actually responsible for all the other departments you mentioned (accounting, marketing, etc.) in the best nonprofits? You really can't do accounting, marketing or fundraising without IT. ...you could try but you'd have a heck of a hard time scaling. Think of IT as an umbrella that keeps all the other departments from getting wet. In the best nonprofits, it should be integrated into every department and not be a standalone. The only way to effectively address complaints about ineffective organization? Offer a solution. How about this: replace our world of the three overlapping sets: communications/ operations/accounting--with a new world---mission/community/investment. The catches? If your giving is an investme...

Just read Andrew Taylor's post An Unpleasant Argument . In his post he struggles with donor challenges about how to prioritize the recipients of charitable gifts: Why should people give to your organization rather than support the poor, the hungry, or the destitute? And why should your donors get a tax break on their gifts? It reminded me of something that happened during the Katrina disaster. Rescuers enforced triage rules and refused to allow people to bring their pets. Of all of the horrors that occurred during the bungled emergency response, this gave me the most pause. It was a double punch, first you've just lost your home and you've been sitting on a roof fearing for your life and then, forced to leave your family cat or dog to a certain death (drowning or starvation). I knew, with every shred of logic I have, that the triage strategy was correct. People first, pets second. And there were people everywhere, stranded and dying and desperate. There's no...

How did I make sense of the nonprofit universe before I discovered the Urban Institute (a Nonpartisian Economic and Public Policy Research Organization)? There are 11 policy centers under the umbrella of the Urban Institute. The one that rocks my boat is, of course, the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy (CNP). The mission of CNP is to promote understanding of civil society and improve nonprofit sector performance through rigorous research, clear analysis and informed policy. Even more enticing is one of CNP's programs: the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) - the national clearinghouse of data on the nonprofit sector in the United States . Current NCCS Projects include: The " Form 990 Wiki " (a collaborative website) for helping the nonprofit research and practitioner communities reason together about the draft IRS Form 990 released in June 2007 by the IRS. The goal is to develop a set of practical recommendations that have been carefu...

How do you achieve your mission without infrastructure? What is your mission? Help underserved youth get jobs? To get to that mission you'll need to: Tell others about your story? Marketing Ask for help (especially money)? Fundraising Keep your government funding? Accounting Answer an email? IT Congratulations, now you need $100,000 to carry out your mission (not counting your salary of course). Will the purpose, the appeal, the grant request and the communication advance your mission? Sure, but it has to make more than $100,000. Enter the business measurement: Return on Investment or ROI. This is a measure that profit making companies use to determine how much money they make from how much money they used. In other words, if you invest $100,000 and make $500,000, that would be a pretty good return on your investment. Now, what place does ROI have in the no...

How many nonprofits are there in the U.S.? According to the Nonprofit Quarterly, there are 1.4 million nonprofits in the U.S. 299,000 of which were 501(c) 3's over $25K and 545,000 were non-filing under $25K. That is 845,000, NOT 1.4 million. What are the missing 568,000? Turns out they are "other nonprofits" meaning not 501 (c) 3's . 104,000 were private foundations - 501(c) 4's and the remaining 465,000 was the 501's that weren't "3's" and "4's). Now I was down to 299,000 nonprofits in the U.S. (the kind I usually think of as nonprofits--the human services, the charities, the arts, the education, etc. etc.) But we're not done yet. Of the 299,000, 39,000 of them are the hospitals & health groups I was originally looking for. That leaves us with 260,000 nonprofits - not 1.4 million. Those 39,000 hospitals (only 13% of the 299,000) spend 47% of the billions of budget dollars. Here's the data: ...

Nonprofit Salary Due Diligence: Comparing Nonprofit Compensation to our "for-profit" cousins How did I wander into this strange land where nonprofit executive salaries over $200,000 may be considered excessive? In 2004, the median nonprofit CEO salary was $291,356 [1] (keep in mind that these were in the mid-range salaries): As nonprofit leaders we must perform our due diligence and consider the reasonableness of these for- profit sector salaries. Hmmmm. Let's start with a peak at the AFL-CIO’s “ Executive Pay Watch ”: Alan G. Lafley, of Procter & Gamble earned $ 24,620,600 ; Kenneth I. Chenault American Express earned $ 23,619,693 ; Charles O. Prince of Citigroup Inc. $ 22,994,729 ; William B. Harrison of JPMorgan Chase & Co. earned $ 22,338,815 ; Kenneth D. Lewis of Bank of America earned $ 22,027,984. Compare these to your salary! [1] Chronicle of Philanthropy, September 30, 2004 Executive Pay Rises Modestly “Trend could continue as IRS...

Deloitte & Touche and the Points of Light Volunteer Foundation conducted a study that challenges nonprofits to consider whether time is, in fact, money. They make an observation: (that) while a majority of nonprofit leaders think the greatest contribution companies can make to them is financial, corporate contributions represent only about one percent of the total operating budgets of nonprofits, indicating an extremely limited resource and then asked 200 non-profit leaders and 750 white-collar workers about the value of workplace skills to nonprofits. What do you need to run your company? The universal answer: money. The challenge: Aren't skilled management professional volunteers just as important (or more important) than money? What if (and this will be a shocker) there isn't enough money to go around? They concluded that "Despite the fact that nonprofits and volunteers both place a very high value on workplace skills, neither are capitalizing on them t...

What words strike fear into the hearts of nonprofit accountants? Here is my list so far: Matching Costs Depreciation In-kind Donations Cost Allocation Overhead If auditors want to play "gotcha" all they have to do is utter these 4-letter words. No matter how properly a nonprofit handles these, they will always be open to question. Auditors know this, and so, when they have no findings, they seem to always pull these out of the hat. Matching Costs: How did you calculate these costs? How do you ensure you haven't used the same funds to match multiple grants? Depreciation: Why haven't you depreciated your capital improvements? Because you won't let us own the building! In-kind donations : How did you value these? Did you reflect them on your general ledger ? Cost Allocations : What is your basis? Do they fluctuate over the year? Did you allocate based on budgets (g-d forbid!) Overhead : You can't charge this here, it's unallowable....

Many a nonprofit staffer has looked around and not liked what they saw. We've all heard the complaints, perhaps we've been the one making them. The techie's complain that our leaders "don't understand today's technology"; the accountants complain that "they're kidding themselves about the fundraiser being a success"; the program staff complain that "the performance measures are BOTH impossible to meet AND meaningless"; the staff complain that "they aren't paid enough" AND "that they don't have an adequate budget to run an effective program". We all complain that we don't have the government and public support we require. The stats say the baby boomers are about to retire. Who will take the reigns? How will be meet the challenge our leaders leave us? There really is no other answer, we'll have to put our money where our mouth is. The challenge is not then, but now. Why wait? Let's lea...

Do nonprofits need an act to prove our integrity? The whole notion irritates me. It irritated California Association of Nonprofits (CAN) too. After the bills passage, CAN issued a statement including this message: In addition to the fiscal burdens highlighted in the Governor’s message, we remain concerned that SB 1262 sets a dangerous precedent, detailing the composition and operations of nonprofit boards of directors, dictating the contents of contracts, and establishing government mandates for practices that are best left to the discretion of individual organizations. We urge that future legislation intended to improve nonprofit integrity not be conceived without extensive consultation with all stakeholders and be based on a comprehensive examination of the issues rather than reactions to specific incidents. In addition, CAN looks forward to improvements in nonprofit oversight growing out of the California Performance Review and to joining with the Governor to strengthen the wor...

I took a break from blogging for the past few months. It was not really a summer vacation. It was just that I got the blogging blues. Because I was getting wrapped up in the Wiki-RSS-SecondLife-Web 2.0-Social Media maelstrom. I was afraid my philosophical musings couldn't compete. In short, I lost my way. What is my way? I’m here to provide a philosophical examination of the issues underlying our nonprofit ways. Sometimes it’s accounting or compliance and yes sometimes technology or meta-tech. Unfortunately, I’m a generalist lost between the hot topics with the great "take aways". My message isn’t clear (or clear enough) and I only reach 39 unique visitors. Yes I’m RSS-able and search optimized and post regularly (at least I did for 14 consecutive months. So why bother? Because there are things that I need to say and I’m compelled to say them. In addition, because I have found myself among a community--one that I never had before. A group of nonprofit bloggers I’...

I don’t want to be a buzz-kill, but I hate buzz words. I hate take-aways. I love take-out (at least I did before I moved to LA which doesn’t have great take-out). I hate social networking. I’m anti-social. So sue me! I hate anything with “tube” in the name. I hate Face Book as much as I hate Flckr. I hate information overload. I love information. As long as it is not about the latest buzz words. Where am I going with this? Remember the Rolodex? the Day Timer ? Anybody? Buhler? Buhler? [1] I had some sweet Rolodex shareware. How about the Palm Pilot? And when am I going to get my flying car darn it! Carving in stone gets you close to eternity, even paper has a shot if it stays cool and dry. But where is anybody going to get a 5 ½ inch floppy drive in 2010? For that matter where is anyone going to get one today? I have one! But I don’t have a cable to connect it and I don’t have a suitable port on my teeny computer (they don’t call them PC’s anymore do t...

I'm just a bill/Yes, I'm only a bill And I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill Well, it's a long, long journey To the capital city It's a long, long wait While I'm sitting in committee But I know I'll be a law someday At least I hope and pray that I will But today I am still just a bill. --SchoolHouse Rock, 1970 I went on my first "hill visit" last month. I was very excited about educating our congressman on the challenges nonprofits face. I didn't know how naive I was until I sat in his office. First, although we had an appointment, we were greeted by an "aide" with a notepad. No actual congressman face time. Second, there was no spark of interest until we described (in detail) what work we were doing in HIS district. So what about city-wide services, just tell me about mine!; Third, the aide did not write anything on the notepad (although she held her pen at the ready) UNTIL we mentioned a specific piece of legislation ...

an exploration of anti-meeting sentiment in the blogosphere Happiness runs in a circular motion/ thought is just a little boat upon the sea/ everybody is a part of everything anyway/ you can have it all if you let yourself be. Donovan , 1969 Happiness. Work Meetings. What do these two have in common? If you answered "nothing", you are not alone. To find like-minded individuals, Google "I hate meetings" for 12,000 hits (make sure to type the "quotes" or you'll get ten zillion hits)! With that, it's time to announce my latest del.icio.us tag: IHateMeetings Matt Raible in his April, 2006 post " Tips for Productivity and Happiness and Work " offers the following advice: Avoid meetings at all costs. Find a way to walk out of meetings that are unproductive, don't concern you, or spiral into two co-workers bitching at each other. While meetings in general are a waste of time, some are worse than others. Establish your policy of w...

"I don’t understand these fundraisers, …they waste all this money…why don't they just give the money to …the sick people?" "…you know what? They don’t! They throw a party so rich people like me can spend $10,000 on a table and then they give it to the sick people!" ...that’s how it’s done ! Joan Cusack to Jennifer Aniston in "Friends with Money" Alright, let's get this over with folks: Fundraisers are a Lie! Yes that's right you heard me. A few months back, I attended a luncheon to raise funds for a school for the deaf. Yes, it was luncheon and a fashion show and a fundraiser all in one. First there was the obligatory silent auction, then (during lunch) the not-so-silent auction, and then after lunch when the plates were taken away, we were asked if we would like to purchase the Orchid Centerpieces! Hadn't they got enough from us? Let me think-No! Easy as it is to lampoon a fundraiser, that is not where I am going today. One of the ladies w...

Last November, in a post called " The Limitations of Dashboards " I wrote about my disappointment with the promise of electronic "dashboards". But when I was about to waive the white flag, I found him. Who? The Dashboard Spy , that's who. And who is this spy guy? Nobody knows, and nobody has to really care either (see spy bio at the end of this article if you really want the scoop). The point is, he introduced me to some very inspiring applications of what a dashboard can do for a nonprofit (or the community in general). Let's get down to specifics. Whatcom County's Community Dashboard uses red-yellow-green gauges as indicators of everything from Annual voter turnout, to Suicide Rates. They have gauges for women owned firms, violent crime, domestic violence incidence rate, rental affordability, releases of carcinogens into the air. And more! A girl who loves data might find her match here. The site does offer the raw data, and drills down to...

Thinking Clearly by pam ashlund Remember Hobbes describing life as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"? Well how about this quote from the critical thinking website: "much of our thinking...is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed, or downright prejudiced." Critical Thinking Website I'm thinking about nonprofit effectiveness today (again). Why is it one of my favorite topics? Because...IF WE AREN'T EFFECTIVE WHY ARE WE BOTHERING???? It seems even Bill Gates Senior is asking this question. I have to paraphrase him here (from a talk at a small gathering). The essence of his statement was this: Historically most efforts to cure social problems had little or no effect or (this is the frightening part) only made them worse . What a disturbing claim; even more so because of how it resonates. In a February post I wrote about the counterintuitive nature of social problems . That article (more than many) has influenced (haunted?) my thinking ever sin...

It was back in April, 06 that I first got "blog-itis". Finally a technology that conformed to my need. I don't know why, but I've always "choked" when I try to write; but a blog post let me capture an insight without overwhelm (after all, you can always write another post). I started out with a copycat approach. I used my friends blog as a template. I took the easy road with Blogger. And then the fun began. I covered this journey in Birth of a Blog way back when. So today I just want to give props to the bloggers that gave me that critical guidance, resources and inspiration to get me going: Beth Kanter's Beth's Blog Allen Benamer's Non-Profit Tech: Confessions of an IT Director Michelle Murrain's Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Blog Michael Stein's Non-Profit Technology Blog Technorati Tags: Blogging , MetaBlog , Nonprofit , NPTech

"Since untruths can be unintentional, the truth must be intentional" Arline Belton The greatest obstacles to truth telling are: "time is limited" and fear that "truth will hurt us, or someone or something we care about." Arline Belton I'd never heard of an "Organizational Healer" before. That is, until I read Erline Belton's article Truth or Consequences? in the NonProfit Quarterly. I offer an executive summary of the article, but highly recommend reading the real thing. Arline is the CEO of the Lyceum Group in Boston. She has been identified by clients as an organization healer, and feels honored to be of service as she practices organization development from her heart and head. It seems like honesty would be a given in the nonprofit sector; afterall we're the good guys right? Yes and No. Arline identifies barriers to telling the truth : Groupthink (you are a team player AREN'T YOU ?) Imaginary Conflicts Hidden Age...

Last week I wrote a "hate" post and created a del.icio.us tag " IhateMeetings "; Today I offer an antidote: a new del.icio.us tag: " Icouldn'tsayitbetter " I've tagged articles (and blog posts) that are so well put that I'm left humbled. These authors write what I've felt for so long, but could not articulate. When you're feeling overwhelmed by the insanity in the nonprofit world, here are some ideas that will help you find your way back to sanity (some already becoming "classics"): 1) Clara Miller talks about why the "normal" rules of accounting get very weird when applied to nonprofits in: The Looking-Glass World of Nonprofit Money: Managing in For-Profits' Shadow Clara steps "through the looking glass" asking (and answering) the following true/false questions: Rule 1: The consumer buys the product. Rule 2: Price covers cost and eventually produces profits, or the business folds. Rule 3: Cash is ...