GOVERNMENT FUNDING FOR NONPROFITS: DON'T EAT YOUR YOUNG

Government Funding for Nonprofits: Don't Eat Your Young
by pam ashlund

It's like a jungle, sometimes it makes me wonder
How I keep from going under -- Grand Master Flash

I have a bad feeling. The same bad feeling I had when I heard about the Homeland Security Act, or the infamous "weapons of mass destruction" speech. My spidey-sense is screaming "Something is going horribly wrong with Nonprofit Accountability".

I'm not usually a trend watcher, but me thinks I smell a trend. Seems the fall-out from Enron and Sarbanes-Oxley has finally hit the nonprofit sector. Visits from individual government funding sources are on the rise.

OMB A-133 was supposed to protect nonprofit agencies with multiple funding sources from being drowned in a wave of audits. One "Single Agency-wide Audit" would keep everybody happy. Ha!

Government agencies found a loop-hole. "We aren't doing an audit, we're just doing a fiscal review".

At last count one organization I know had twenty-five separate funding source's pay a visit to perform "fiscal reviews". All this in one year.

Another disturbing trend? Those same government agencies began to insist on subsidiary schedules in the annual audit. At whose expense? The nonprofits of course.

I have been a strong advocate for accountability in nonprofits (it's right up there with personal integrity), but I have a bad feeling that the Enron aftershocks have Government agencies eating their young.

What is OMB A-133?
Entities that receive federal funds are subject to audit requirements that are commonly referred to as "single audits". The Single Audit Act is intended to promote sound financial management, including effective internal control, with respect to federal awards administered by Nonprofit Organizations (NPO)s.

Want to read the circular?

OMB Circular A-133 - Audits of States, Local Governments, and Non-Profit Organizations (06/24/1997, includes revisions published in Federal Register 06/27/03) HTML or PDF (127k)


Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE LIES PEOPLE TELL US (AND THE ONES WE TELL OURSELVES)

"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...
Read more

GRAFITTI OR SOCIAL CHANGE?

Image
art institutions are a severely limited arena of reception for ideas about public issues --Robbie Conal If I can't take my coffee break, Gone is the sense of enterprise ...something within me dies. -- How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying I was born with a "Question Authority" bumper sticker metaphorically stuck on the back of my car. I grew up with that expression (and what it represents) as my moral imperative. But I've been worried lately. I've been worried because it doesn't seem to be turning out the way I thought it would. Seems a QA attitude is not necessarily conducive to civil society. It all depends on who's the authority I suppose. I seem to have the easiest time applying it to government and politics. But at what point do the concepts of "questioning" and the notion of "participating" intersect? Becoming a manager was a pivotal point in my life. A place where I had to make the transition from "hating t...
Read more

BIRTH OF A BLOG: GUERILLA MARKETING, EFFECTIVE USE OF TECHNOLOGY & GOOD CONTENT WIN THE DAY

Birth of a Blog: Guerilla Marketing, Effective Use of Technology and Good Content Win the Day by pam ashlund A funny thing happened when I started using Technorati. All I wanted was a quick way to see who ( if ANYONE ) was linking to my blog. First, I had to sign up with one of these services and I picked Technorati because it was the first one I came across. Second, I then found out that I was right from the beginning, no one was linking to my site. Third, I decided to try my hand at a bit of self-marketing, which went as follows: Get my brother-in-law to link to my site Set up another dummy blog and link to myself Arm wrestle another friend to link to my site None of that had much of an impact (of course) so I moved on to some actual strategy: Add tags to my blog configuration on Technorati Add tags to my posts (this was painful and manual although I later found a script for it) Test the results - found I showed up in search engines a LITTLE bit more frequently Still no links (tap, ...
Read more