Easy Office Blog

Grant Writing for Dummies

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 19:49:00 GMT

At the recent Down Syndrome Affiliates in Action conference, we had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Browning, the founder of eCivis and an overall great person. eCivis (www.ecivis.com) is an online provider of federal, state, and foundation grant information and grants management tools for local government and nonprofits. These entities rely on eCivis to identify appropriate grants, submit competitive applications, and efficiently manage awards while dramatically reducing their administrative costs. eCivis assists them by providing a comprehensive and easy-to-search grants database, training resources, and reporting tools for compliance and transparency. In addition to these products, eCivis provides expert grant writing, peer review, onsite/remote training, and technical assistance services to ensure that customers are best positioned to submit successful applications. Dr. Bev Browning, Vice President of Grants Professional Services for eCivis co-developed Nonprofit One-Stop. She is also the author of "Grant Writing for Dummies".

We always enjoy meeting like-minded people who are out there helping to make the non-profit sector more efficient. We thought you all would enjoy knowing about her as well.

What are the chances my nonprofit gets audited by the IRS?

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 06:24:00 GMT

Here is a good post from our friends at Blue Avocado. http://www.blueavocado.org/node/718 It carries the scary title "I Survived an IRS audit." However, as with most things in life, if you are doing nothing wrong you have nothing to hide. The only reason to fear an IRS audit is if you are doing something inappropriate. Granted, I suppose you can fear the time it will take. And I suppose the fear that they will find an inadvertent honest mistake is a concern. But largely I believe the IRS is looking for systematic fraud or pure chicanary.

You should also know that according to "Every Nonprofits' Tax Guide" by Stephen Fishman, only 0.8% of nonprofits are audited. The IRS audits about 8,000 / year. So chances are, you have very little to be worried about.

In the sector, we should be glad that the IRS helps us police the groups that give us all bad names. Those bad apples need to be removed.

Easy Office Webinar: Grant Tracking

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 06:06:00 GMT

Check out this 30 minute video from Mary Leaton, CPA, DIrector of Accounting Services. She quickly outlines the basic tenants to tracking and managing your grants. Mary leverages her 20+ years of nonprofit accounting experience, along with her current responsibility for over $100M in grants, to deliver quick succinct best practices.

Let us know what you think!

Easy Office Webinar: Nonprofit Financial Statements

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 06:06:00 GMT

Watch this 45 webinar regarding nonprofit financial statements. We cover how to read and interpret financial statements. We show examples of reports. We discuss the unique differences between for-profit and non-profit accounting terms. It is a useful primer for any Executive Director or non-profit board member.

Easy Office Webinar: Nonprofit Accounting 101

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 06:05:00 GMT

Enjoy this 55 minute webinar, followed by 10 minutes of Q&A, delivered by Jeff Russell, CEO of Easy Office. GIves a succinct overview of all facets for successful nonprofit accounting and bookkeeping. Includes discussions on nonprofit specific rules and an overview of the required people, processes, and systems required to manage your financial information. Let us know what you think!

Easy Office Updates

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 06:03:00 GMT

Easy Office continues to grow and assist more and more nonprofits in achieving their missions. As of January 2012 our range of clients include nonprofits of all sizes and types, ranging from all-volunteer organizations, churches, Boy Scout councils, a $25M nonprofit in Michigan and a very popular Museum in NYC with a $1 billion balance sheet.

We are humbled by the nonprofit sector’s response to our unique social venture organization. Over the past 3 years we have learned a lot as an organization and we continue to reinvest in our people and our processes to ensure we are helping our clients improve their impact in our communities and in our world. Click here (http://youtu.be/H3nxuxt1hlw) to watch a 6 minute talk from our CEO, Jeff Russell, about the founding of Easy Office and some recent the ways we’re continuing to make internal improvements that help us help our nonprofit clients with their missions throughout the world.

It is an honor for us to continue to work in this sector and to play a small role in the great work of the organizations we serve.

Executive Director's Guide to Financial Leadership

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 21:17:00 GMT

Good article from Kate Barr and Jeanne Bell of CompassPoint on Financial Leadership. In particular, we like the section where they say:

Invest in contract consultants. So how does an organization with limited resources adequately attend to all three finance functions? Increasingly, we are seeing executives pair contract consultants with staff in the finance function. ...... This way, the executive has a strategic financial partner without creating a fixed staffing cost that she can’t afford. Board members, including the treasurer, have a role that is distinct from the staff finance team. The executive needs an uncomplicated relationship to her finance team so that she can direct them in developing the analysis and reporting she needs as the organization’s financial leader.

Outsourcing can be a key way to develop capacity around your nonprofits finances. It is a trend we see growing in increasing acceptance.

Small is Beautiful Part II

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:06:00 GMT

Here is a great blog by our friends at Blue Avocado. It is a thoughtful look at what types of nonprofits should scale - the headline "Only Bad Restaurants Go To Scale" caught my eye: http://blueavocado.org/content/only-bad-restaurants-go-scale

It ties in nicely with a blog from my past, Small is Beautiful, http://youreasyoffice.com/_blog/Easy_Office_Blog/post/Small_is_Beautiful/, that talks about "going to scale" via shared services and outsourcing. Many of the challenges of size can be solved - not just through warm and fuzzy collaboration - but through established shared service and outsourcing relationships.

When we as a nonprofit sector focus on doing what we do best, all of our clients & causes are better off.

Ghost Employees

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 15:34:00 GMT

The Chronicle of Philanthropy is reporting another sad story of non-profit fraud. The struggling Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, CT has been fighting insolvency for some time. Now, to add to their woes, their controller for the past 20 years has admitted to systematically stealing over $1 million from the organization over the past decade.

She used a common trick - ghost employees. For those of us in the sector who have seasonal workers, or a large part-time staff, ghost employees can be a real problem. They are very common on farms and in agricultural situations. The bookkeeper simply "invents" an employee and pays them. Management often doesn't notice as payroll gets entered into the accounting system in a lump sum.

There are several things you can do to avoid this. However the most imporant is that a pre-payroll register should be approved and signed - and not necessarily by the Executive Director who may be too far removed from the details to sign appropriately. Payroll should be broken into chunks by department by person; so that the people and amounts can be meaningfully looked at and approved.

There is more good than bad in our sector, but it always pays to keep your eyes open and your systems water-tight.

Shared Services and Affiliated Nonprofits

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 19:26:00 GMT

Recently we have been having more and more conversations with franchised or affiliated nonprofits. These are the groups that have a national brand, but have unique 501c3's serving local geographies. Groups like the YMCA, Boy Scouts of America, Make*A*Wish, Special Olympics, and many many more have this model. (Sharon Oster, Yale School of Management Professor, has written some great articles on this topic.)

Many of these organizations were founded decades ago, or in the case of some, 100+ years ago. At the time, decentralization was about the only way to operate a national model. The airplane was just being invented when the Boy Scouts were founded and organized. Now there are many great studies, like Professor Oster's, that outline the pros and cons of centralization.

One thing in research is pretty consistent, centralized shared services make sense for most organizations. The program impact and cultural impact is often minimal and the financial savings are significant. That is money that can be saved and diverted into programs and mission critical activities. Shared services, or outsourcing as a group to a vendor, is a quick way to achieve financial savings across an affiliated network (without all of the pain and emotion involved in mergers or other cost saving activities.)

There are great consultants out there who exist to help people think through these issues. There is no single silver bullet answer. But the time has come for affiliated nonprofits to investigate this as a solution.

Fraud is all too common

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 22:21:00 GMT

Fraud is all too common. Typically as non-profits we take an overly trusting stance. We like to believe the best about people and are generally a hopeful group. In the arena of fraud, we need to become a bit more cynical.

The best way to avoid fraud is to ensure you have proper controls to prevent fraud. Sometimes the best of people - when presented with an opportunity - will make bad decisions. Proper controls give everyone peace of mind that they won't be tempted, and if they are, they are guaranteed to get caught.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy ran an article on September 15th about a case of persistent and consistent fraud. The Dean of the St. John's Institute for Asian Studies in Queens is accused of systematically stealing over $1M. Her actions were caught during a routine internal audit. Internal audits and external audits are essential. Typically if people know they will get caught, this creates enough of a deterrent to prevent fraud. However in this case, the Dean thought she had found a loophole. In fact, she may have got away with it for a long time. Her actual downfall was an expense report that included personal charges. As they began to investigate this small issue, the larger picture emerged. Her greed ultimately was her downfall. St. John's is now reviewing their internal control structure in hopes to avoid this in the future.

Trust is an important quality, but when it comes to money and financial matters, checks and balances rule the day.

Capacity Building

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 19:29:00 GMT

Capacity building is front and center in my mind, after just attending the Alliance for Nonprofit Management conference (solid organization by the way.) There are 100 definitions of capacity building and a fair bit of discussion around what it exactly is. Strategic planning, executive coaching, financial training, and program evaluation all typically fall under the capacity building umbrella.

During the conference, we hosted a discussion on "Financial Capacity Building - the Pieces of the Puzzle." Historically funders and organizations that seek to help non-profits have focused training efforts on how to do accounting. We believe that capacity building efforts should be focused on how to use accounting, not do accounting. Financial capacity building has 3 stool legs- a provider to do the work, an ED who can use the info, and a Board / CFO / Treasurer / Consultant who can monitor the process.

Can you imagine the Maryland Association of Bricklayers hosting 1/2 day Finance 101 workshops teaching folks how to use Quickbooks, teaching them the nuances of cost accounting, explaining debits and credits and then releasing them to go do all the work? Instead, realistically, they would teach them how to use financial information to determine their pricing, monitor cash flow, and budget for the future. They would teach them how to use the information and suggest to them they they hire a bookkeeper or accountant to do the work.

Financial Review vs. Audit

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 20:06:00 GMT

Blue Avocado recently published a great letter from a lawyer regarding the difference between a Financial Review and a full-blown Audit. Check it out here: http://www.blueavocado.org/content/attorney-recommends-review-instead-audit

Clients frequently ask us if they need an audit or a review. This can be dictated by state requirements, the need for a Federal A-133, or by specific funders requirements. The state of New York has especially onerous requirements that have a very low threshold for when non-profits have to conduct an audit. Each organization should be aware of the state requirements and requirements of funders - both current and future prospects - when making this decision. There are two basic differences between the two: One, the cost of a review is typically 1/2 that of an audit. And secondly, a review is just that... a review. The CPA doesn't perform in-depth 'testing' as they do in an audit. They review for material issues and obvious deviations from GAAP. But they won't go in and test unique individual transactions in the same way an audit is done. A review provides some assurance, but does not independently validate transactions.

The moral of the story is to make sure you comply with government regulations based on your size and geography. And be proactive to understand funders requirements. (i.e. the United Way requires a review for organizations of a certain size, an audit for larger ones.)

Keeping track of all these regulations can be tricky, so make sure you have an active informed Finance Committee or a partner like Easy Office who can help you through the issues.

Four Futures

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:53:00 GMT

Paul Light's 5-page article on the Four Futures facing the non-profit sector is worth a read. http://tiny.cc/d06xa On the heels of my post about "Small is Beautiful" this article highlights the challenges small organizations face. He talks about all the buzzwords of collaboration, efficiency, and scale. Whether you agree with his assessment or not of the potential four futures for the sector, his article is one more piece of evidence that the need for flexibility and unique collaborative business models - like ours - are continuing to gain traction.

We are seeing mergers among our client base and a continued push to find efficiencies in the face of funding cuts. I believe this is making the sector stronger and much more focused.

American's tend to be optimists and I'm excited to see how our sector steps up and responds collectively to the challenges all around. We have a great future ahead of us.

Small is Beautiful

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:54:00 GMT

Of the 1.1 million non-profits in the US, 90+% have an annual budget of under $1M. A very high percentage of those have an annual budget of under $100,000. There is frequent talk of the need for non-profits to merge. The conventional wisdom goes that there are too many small non-profits, performing uncoordinated redundant tasks. Conventional wisdom also states that because they are small, they can never attain the scale to run efficiently, i.e. the small folks spend too much on administrative costs.

While much of this is true, I have a different philosophy. I feel that one of the key roles that non-profits play in society is as niche-fillers. Societies major institutions are governments, educational institutions, corporations, and religious institutions. I believe that non-profits, in part, exist to fill the cracks between these major building blocks. In essence, non-profits pick up where others fail. If you agree that this is a primary role of non-profits, then small is beautiful. A smaller, more nimble, organization can more readily fill those cracks in society.

As to mergers or shared cooperatives, the primary issue tends to be around people. Who is going to lead the merger? What is the new name going to be? Who will be the Executive Director and who will be the Assistant? As to cooperatives, like the hen baking bread, everyone wants the benefits but no one wants to organize them. This is part of the reason why we created Easy Office. We can deliver the scale, access to technology, and expertise that no single organization can reasonably afford on their own. We enable the non-profit sector to stay relatively small and nimble. And our shared service approach allows the service to be affordable and accessible for even the smallest of non-profits.