Do you remember ever seeing this comment on a product when you were shopping at Amazon?
Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
Ever wonder the reason for that shipping restriction?
For some products it’s because there is encryption software inside the product with a certain level of complexity.
Why is that a biggie?
Mentioned some satires previously. Here is another. Check out ‘The Gathering’: A Philanthropic Satire, from the Chronicle of Philanthropy reportedly written by someone familiar with the airy world of nonstop high-level meetings at the top of the foundation world.
“Wilson”, the foundation’s CEO, attends non-stop meetings on the conference circuit to talk with the same people he talked to at the last meeting and listen to the same presentations he heard before. As everyone gathers the night before you see: (more…)
Previously mentioned I’ve moved the website for my CPA practice from GoDaddy using their Website Tonight software to a blog at WordPress. If you don’t like this blog-as-a-web-site idea, I would heartily recommend you check out GoDaddy’s Website Tonight service.
This post will give a picture of what the site was like before the move.
You can see the previous discussion here, with my current website here.
I just published my short book, “Once Upon Internal Control” at Smashwords, which means it is now available in several formats:
You can preview 30% of the book for free.
What’s this book about? (more…)
Since football season is in full swing, let’s go to the nearest stadium to compare an audit to a review, to a compilation, and to the newest level of service, a preparation report.
Audit
If you were performing an audit, you would be on the field and receive the kickoff at your 20-yard line. A series of passes and runs would slowly move the ball. With effort you would advance to your opponent’s 10-yard line. Good touchdown position.
Advancing the football would be the same as gathering evidence to provide you a reasonable level of assurance so you could issue an audit opinion on the financial statements.
Consider these jokes that are more than jokes:
Your unneeded radiators can help freezing Norwegians.
Frostbite kills too. Just like poverty.
Check out this spoof of development videos – a fundraiser to send radiators to Norwegians because it is so cold there:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oJLqyuxm96k#t=206]
Compassionate singers and actors in Africa rally to raise funds to help the Norwegians cope with the pressures of living in their environment. Additional comment at end of this post.
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oJLqyuxm96k#t=108
Two more spoofs:
A complete failure
I’m adding a new category of good stuff, which will be called “impact” for the time being.
Here are some more articles worth attention but I don’t have enough time to comment in a full post. Here are the headlines, with links and a brief comment below:
Impact
(Cross-post from my other blog, Outrun Change.)
My friend, John Bredehoft, celebrates his tenth blogiversary today at Empoprise-BI. His post highlighting that achievement is Ten-year anniversary of my first blog post.
He writes five blogs each addressing a different topic, one of which I mention here frequently: tymshft
That’s quite an achievement. Congratulations John!
William Barrett points out there was some missing disclosure in the JofA article on GIK in his post Seattle-area charity scores P.R. coup from lack of disclosure.
I discussed the JofA article here.
The missing information is that World Vision is one of the biggest players in the GIK valuation issue getting so much attention today.
The JofA article contains no mention that World Vision has been criticized heavily for their accounting of GIK.
A few thoughts for meetings being held today….
The clock is ticking. Perhaps that’s a good analogy since football season is well underway.
Unlike football, we don’t know how much time is on the clock, but we do know time is running.
The nonprofit community still has time to clean up the GIK valuation issue since the clock hasn’t run out.
Here’s a great question to drive your strategic planning:
What is success?
Follow-up questions could be:
If you can answer that one key question, a host of other questions would be easy to answer.
The debate around what is happening in the NPO sector is a good and healthy.
For some serious pushback against the critique of the charity sector by Mr. Dan Pallotta (which I’ve mentioned here and here), check out the article by Mr. Phil Buchanan at Huffington Post: Getting the Facts Straight About the Nonprofit Sector.
If you have been following the conversations in the NPO community, you really ought to check out Mr. Buchanan’s article.
Here are my brief thoughts on three of his four critiques of the critique:
First, Pallotta says the sector has failed because we haven’t “ended” homelessness or poverty.
Mr. Buchanan wonders that if that’s the standard, then perhaps the NPO community should get full credit for improved infant mortality.
A moment of background, which I know is the completely wrong way to start a blog post – The Journal of Accountancy is one of the major publications in the accounting world. It is the lead magazine of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the largest trade association for CPAs. The AICPA also has significant self-regulatory authority for large parts of the CPA profession.
You might want to get a fresh cup of coffee – this will be a long post.
In its August 2013 edition, the JofA published a major article on valuing donated goods: Gifts-in-kind: What are they worth? How to avoid pitfalls of GIK valuation. The article is by Jennifer Brenner,
…an associate director for financial accounting and operations for World Vision, a relief, development, and advocacy organization that works to fight poverty.
She blogs here. She is speaking on her own behalf, not as a representative of her employer.
General comments
I have two general comments before I get into discussing specific ideas mentioned in the article.
First, the article is superb. It provides a very good description of the accounting rules regarding GIK valuation. It uses precise, technical wording while providing a great explanation. If you want to understand the rules for valuing GIK, please study the article.
Second, the article addresses most of the issues that are getting attention in the NPO community. If you want to learn the accounting words you can use to criticize the valuations currently in use, you would do well to study the article. The ironic thing is this article provides a superb path to frame up criticisms of the valuations used today and in the past.
Mr. Jeff Beaumont is a CPA working for a firm that focuses on serving the nonprofit community. His opinions are his own and do not reflect the opinions or positions of his firm in any way. Because he speaks for himself, I won’t identify him or his firm in any more detail. He doesn’t speak for me either.
He has about seven years experience as an auditor working on the issues discussed on this blog.
By Jeff Beaumont, CPA
Would it be helpful to more thoroughly understand incoming church attendees, their giving, and if they feel accepted, welcomed, and a part of the local church family? This post will explore analyzing how long it takes for someone to give as a means to understand the newcomers.
About tracking trends, there are some considerations we need to ponder. When someone first shows up at church, they rarely give the first day. If they do give, they rarely would give their “normal” amount unless they felt part of the church, as if they had some sort of relationship or ownership.
