NonprofitEye

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’...