Jim Ulvog

News reports in the last week about Wounded Warrior Project – 3/30

Here are a few articles I found interesting about WWP in the last week, including an interview with the departed CEO and COO.

3/28 – News 4 Jax – Wounded Warrior Project names interim COO – The WWP board appointed retired Major General Charlie Fletcher as interim COO beginning April 11.  He has 30 years experience on active duty. He currently is one of the people on the advisory board.

3/28 –Board Source – Wounded Warrior Project-A Classic Case Study – Author is paying close attention to the WWP story. Real, current situations are wonderful teaching tools. Responses to Sen. Grassley’s inquiry letter will provide lots of insight.

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Jim Ulvog

A song to explain why this is such an important day to so many people.

In case you were wondering what is so wonderful about today, here is a song to explain why this is a celebration of the most wonderful thing that has ever happened in the world. Repost from March 31, 2013.

He is risen! He is risen indeed!

This morning my wife and I attended a sunrise service. Haven’t done that for many years. A wonderful way to celebrate this day. On our way to celebrate with our church family momentarily.

Here’s a selection of 3 videos to help your celebration:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=dT7dGcsrPkQ]

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Jim Ulvog

More Wounded Warrior coverage – 3/24

Here are a few articles in the last few days that caught my eye which follow-up on the media firestorm surrounding Wounded Warrior Project.

3/21 – Charity Defense Council – Letter to Senator Grassley – The letter from the Charity Defense Council (CDC) to Senator Grassley is in response to the senator’s information request to WWP. The Senator asked for an explanation of the relationship between CDC and WWP along with an explanation of how a donation to CDC furthers WWP’s mission.

The letter provides CDC’s explanation.

Let me try to boil it down to a few sentences …

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Jim Ulvog

Wounded Warrior Project fiasco moves into the political realm. Other comments over the weekend.

Stars and Stripes has a good article summarizing the current story and looking forward a few steps. Senator Grassley pulls the WWP story into the political realm.

3/18 – Stars and Stripes – New project for Wounded Warrior charity: Regain trust. Article discusses the dangers facing WWP in terms of public perception and the impact on donations.

Article summarizes a number of recent articles, which makes this a good survey to catch up on what’s happened lately.

I recommend the article for you because of the great way it brings together a number of different threads of the story.

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Jim Ulvog

More coverage of Wounded Warrior Project – First defenses of WWP – 3/18

Lots more discussion of Wounded Warrior Project in the last few days, including a major defense of WWP and the first public comments I’ve seen from the former CEO and COO.

3/17 – Charity Defense Council – Preliminary Media Advisory – Material Errors and Omissions Uncovered in Media Reporting on Wounded Warrior Project – This is a major discussion of the media coverage of WWP’s spending and programming.

I don’t have time to summarize the comments. Hope to do so this weekend.

If you have been reading any of my discussion of the media firestorm, you will definitely want to read this discussion. There is a large volume of information that hasn’t been mentioned in public and a large amount of interpretive comments on how to look at financial statements.

In fact, I’ll suggest you read that article before you read the rest of this post.

3/18 – Fox and Friends on Fox News – Executives fired from Wounded Warrior Project speak out – Departed CEO and COO go on camera. The segment is 7 1/2 minutes. Actual interview is only a two or three minutes since there is an intro, extro, and the headline accusations were repeated.

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Jim Ulvog

How to notify California Secretary of State of a change in your charity’s articles of incorporation

Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com
Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com

If your charity makes a change to the articles of incorporation, you need to notify the Secretary of State. I had opportunity to look at the process in California for filing such a notice.

There are comparable filing requirements in your state. Explore your Secretary of State’s website to find instructions. To help others here’s what I found for California.

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Jim Ulvog

More coverage of Wounded Warrior Project – 3/16

I’ve seen a few more articles of substance in the last two days on the WWP board firing their CEO and COO. Will discuss three articles to see what we can learn about this fiasco and how to deal with a crisis.

Balancing act

The board is in a delicate balancing act.

The media and likely some major donors want the juicy details on why the two execs were let go. I’m interested, too.

The board needs to be careful on how much information they release because of legal exposures, HR issues, and the possibility of causing additional harm to the organization and constituents.

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Jim Ulvog

More coverage of Wounded Warrior Project

Last week, the WWP board fired their CEO and COO.

Most of the articles I’ve glanced at in the last few days are merely a rewrite of the board’s comments on the WWP website and the initial articles from CBS and NYT.

Some substance in the last few days for your consideration:

3/14 – Prof. Brian Mittendorf at Counting on Charity – Four Unsolicited Suggestions for the Wounded Warrior Project Board – Opening line highlights the challenges for all charities of being dependent on public perceptions:

When it comes to popular charities, I am of the opinion that the general public largely believes they can do no wrong, but once the public feels they have done something wrong it’s almost as if they can do no right.

The professor’s four suggestions with a couple of comments from me. (more…)

Jim Ulvog

First day coverage of WWP firing its CEO and COO

Major news yesterday was the CEO and COO of Wounded Warrior Project getting fired by the board of directors. Here are a few articles on the story. Also, my rant on the long-running pattern of media articles that focus on trivialities.

3/10 – CBS News – Wounded Warrior Project execs fired – CBS is reporting that on 3/10 WWP fired Steven Nardizzi, CEO, and Al Diordano, COO. CBS reports preliminary results from a financial audit have been received and reviewed by the board.

3/10 – Chronicle of Philanthropy – Wounded Warrior Project Fires Top Officials After Query Into Spending Practices – Article points to CBS coverage above.  The board initiated a financial and policy audit.

In the hour since CBS broke the story, I saw several dozen articles hit the ‘net that report the story with merely a rewrite of the CBS coverage.

3/10 – Wounded Warrior Project – Board of Directors of Wounded Warrior Project Addresses Independent Review – Very tactful press release says the CEO and COO are no longer with the organization.

The independent review refuted the headline accusations against the organization and tactfully found room for improvement.

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Jim Ulvog

HR tips for charities

Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com
Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com

Unless there is a religious exemption in an area of employment law, religious charities are required to follow all the rules and regulations that apply to businesses.

3/8 – CPA Practice Advisor – 6 HR Must-Knows for Small Businesses in 2016 – These “must-knows” apply to churches and parachurch ministries just as much as small businesses. If you’re not familiar with these issues, your organization could trip over the rules and create big problems.

The issues described in the article and my brief comment:

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Jim Ulvog

Lease accounting rules overhauled

Photo courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com
Photo courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com

The rules describing how to account for all leases were drastically revised on February 25, 2016. That is when the accounting rule setters, FASB, issued their document called Accounting Standards Update 2016-02 – Leases (Topic 842).

You will be hearing a lot more about these changes over the next few years.

Highlights

In extremely brief summary, the new rules require all entities preparing financial statements (including nonprofit organizations) to record all leases as an asset and liability. The assets will be called right to use assets and will be amortized over the life of the lease. An offsetting liability will be recorded. Whether the asset will be reported at the sum of total future payments or at the discounted present value of future payments would depend on the nature of the lease.

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Jim Ulvog

Three areas where accountants could help with analyzing charities

Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com
Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com

Professor Brian Mittendorf has outlined his ideas on how the accounting community could pitch in on industry-wide efforts to assess the effectiveness of charities.

1/25 – Counting on Charity – Three Pressing Issues in the Nonprofit Sector that Need Accounting Input – He  introduced three areas of nonprofit accounting where accountants could help:

  • Accounting for impact investments
  • Follow the money trail through multiple organizations
  • The development of alternative metrics of performance

Expanded discussions:

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Jim Ulvog

CNN reports two charities accused by FTC agree to close their doors.

Federal Trade Commission Building in Washington, DC. - Picture courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com
Federal Trade Commission Building in Washington, DC. – Picture courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com

CNN investigators David Fitzpatrick and Drew Griffin report: Cancer charity targeted by feds agrees to put itself out of business. Article says preliminary documents filed in Federal District Court in Phoenix indicate Cancer Fund of America and the related fundraising arm, Cancer Support Services, agreed to turn control over to receivers for liquidation.

In May 2015, the FTC and 50 state attorneys general sued these two charities and two others run by relatives of the president of CFA, alleging fundraising fraud. Two immediately agreed to liquidate. The two discussed in the CNN report initially fought allegations but have now agreed to close their doors.

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Jim Ulvog

Update on overhaul of not-for-profit financial statement presentation

Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com
Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com

A major rewrite of how NPOs present their financial statements is under consideration by FASB. An exposure draft was released in April 2015.

December FASB meeting

FASB has broken the project into two parts. One will move forward on a timely basis and the other will be postponed for reconsideration.

Here is a high-level summary of key components discussed at their December 11, 2015 meeting,

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Jim Ulvog