Nonprofit finance, accounting, and tax news. Other tidbits of interest to the charity community.
The most exciting thing to me from Reveal: Where Are You (discussed here) is that it IS possible to measure such things as spiritual maturity. You CAN quantify that outcome measure in a local church.
Opening that door in turn opens the door to measuring other intangibles.
How should you handle that check dated 2010 and put in the plate during 2011? What to do with 2010 checks that arrive by mail in 2011 with a 2010 postmark? Get the answer from MinistryCPA blog by Corey Pfaffe CPA. Great article. Very short and to the point.
(duplicate of post from Attestation Update blog)
Update – SSARS 19 had been replaced by SSARS 21. All the reports have been revised. You can check out these posts at my other blog, Attestation Update:
Omission of substantially all disclosures under SSARS No. 19 — Compilation reports will change for organizations with fiscal years ending after December 15, 2010. I have prepared a modified report for departure from GAAP. Here is the report I will be using after the first of the year for my non-profit clients if any choose to omit all disclosures. Please feel free to copy, but make sure you modify this based on your firm’s policies.
(duplicate of post from Attestation Update blog)
Update – SSARS 19 had been replaced by SSARS 21. All the reports have been revised. You can check out these posts at my other blog, Attestation Update:
Omission of cash flow statement under SSARS No. 19– Compilation reports will change for organizations with fiscal years ending after December 15, 2010. Here is the modified report I will be using after the first of the year for my non-profit clients if any would choose to omit the statement of cash flow. I doubt that will happen in my client base, but wanted to make this example available to the CPA community.
I’ve been talking about the Winter 2010 Outcomes from Christian Leadership Alliance. You would learn and stretch if you could take a few minutes and browse the issue.
Kevin Ring has a great article, Future-Proof Ministries that talks through some of the current and long-term tech issues.
Earlier discussed that we need to pay attention to the trends in our culture and then looked at some of those trends identified by David Kinnaman.
How do we respond to those trends? Kinnaman raises four superb questions in his article. I will quote his questions and share my thoughts.
Helping people grow spiritually — Every church I’ve every worked with had a vision that included some variation of that idea. It is phrased differently with varying focus, but that seems to be typical.
What if you could identify things that help that growth? What if you could identify things that are completely irrelevant to helping people grow?
The series of posts on the Tragedy of Fraud have been combined into a separate page, found at the top of this blog. You can read them in chronological order on the page above.
Previous post discussed the sentencing in a fraud case I have been following. Jail for 270 days, $25,000 restitution, and $3,915 of fines and fees. The ripple effects of the fraud have not ended. The next chapter might be in the civil law area.
On December 20, 2010, the judge pronounced sentence in a case I’ve been following. Why go into detail? To continue the discussion of the massive devastation of fraud.
Yes. It is possible to quantify spiritual maturity in a local church. Every non-profit along with all churches can learn from that answer.
What are a few of the changes today that impact the faith-based nonprofit community? Barna Group has a few ideas.
Where our culture is headed and the resulting impact on ministries is the focus of the Winter 2010 issue of Outcomes from Christian Leadership Alliance. Lots of great articles that I’ll talk about a while.
The rate of change around us makes me dizzy.
I’ve written several posts on using Facebook in a ministry setting and the privacy issues for personal use. Click the ‘social media’ category at the right to see what I’ve said before. For another perspective on the Facebook privacy issues, see a post at ULVOG DOT COM, by my cousin Christian Ulvog.
It is easy to measure how much stuff you did. It is very hard to measure what you actually accomplished.
It is easy to count: