Non-profit accounting

Podcast on turmoil involving Wounded Warrior Project

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

If you’ve been following the media turmoil surrounding Wounded Warrior Project, you will want to check out a podcast from The Contributing Factor (that is Bill O’Reilly’s website):  Podcast: Ousted Wounded Warrior Project Executives Speak Out.

There are interviews with the two departed senior executives.

That page also has written responses from the board denying the specifics in the Doug White report.

The board asserts that giving dropped as soon as the media reports surfaced. Mr. Nardizzi asserts that he was watching the giving until the day he was released and noticed the giving was only 1.7% below the projected income.

Check out the podcast. I’ll try to have more comments later.

Jim Ulvog

A completely different perspective on the crisis surrounding Wounded Warrior Project.

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Here are a few articles which will give you a different way of looking at the recent publicity surrounding Wounded Warrior Project. I’ve been swamped by several major projects so haven’t had much time to write recently. Those projects are still not done so I won’t be able to spend as much time on this post as I would like, yet I want to get some comments online for those who have been following the story.

The biggest article is The First Casualty: A report addressing the allegations made against the Wounded Warrior Project in January 2016 by Doug White, published September 6, 2016.

There is a lot of information about the entire story which has received minuscule coverage. Here is my quick recap of his major points:

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Jim Ulvog

Layoffs underway at Wounded Warrior Project

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Layoffs of about 15% of the staff are in progress at WWP, according to an article at Chronicle of Philanthropy by Timothy Sandoval: Wounded Warrior Announces Layoffs and Program Cuts. That would be a reduction of something in the range of 90 people out of the roughly 600 on staff.

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Jim Ulvog

Restructuring underway at Wounded Warrior Project

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Some of the recent news regarding WWP. Much more to say, not enough time today.

Wounded Warrior Project released their financial statements for fiscal year ending September 30, 2015. One sentence summary is they have continued the accounting practices in place for 2014, which have drawn lots of criticism. At first glance, looks to me like functional allocation of expense methodology is unchanged from 2014. Much more discussion is needed on the issue.

Tim Sandoval describes the issue on 8/17 at Chronicle of Philanthropy (behind paywall):  Wounded Warrior Sticks With Accounting Rules That Drew Fire.

Layoffs and restructuring have begun:

8/30 – News 4 Jax – I-Team: Executives laid off, reassigned at Wounded Warrior Project – Article says several executive vice presidents have been let go or reassigned. More changes at the EVP level are expected.

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Jim Ulvog

Guest post: Overview of Changes to NFP Accounting Rules

Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub before they merged into Adobe Stock.
Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub before they merged into Adobe Stock.

Gary L. Krausz, CPA, CFF, is an audit and accounting services partner in the Los Angeles accounting firm, Gursey | Schneider LLP. Mr. Krausz works with many not-for-profit agencies and private foundations in Southern California. The firm’s website is http://www.gursey.com. Mr. Krausz offers the following guest post as an overview to help the not-for-profit community understand the major changes about to take place in accounting and financial reporting for not-for-profit organizations.

By Gary L. Krausz, CPA, CFF

This past Thursday, August 18, 2016, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) approved the long-awaited first step in changes to the financial reporting model for not-for-profit organizations by releasing Accounting Standards Update No. 2016-14, Not-for-Profit Entities (Topic 958): Presentation of Financial Statements of Not-for-Profit Entities. These changes, when effective, will result significant reporting improvements for most not-for-profit organizations including our clients with such diverse operations such as (1) schools, (2) community agencies, (3) private foundations, (4) associations, and (5) religious organizations. The proposed changes will be effective for years beginning after 12/15/2017 (which means calendar years ending on 12/31/2018 and fiscal years ending during the calendar year 2019). Early adoption is permitted.

To highlight just a few of the improvements in Phase I of FASB’s plan:

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Jim Ulvog

FASB releases major change to nonprofit accounting rules: ASU 16-14

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

On 8/18, FASB published a massive overhaul to the accounting rules for not-for-profit organizations. The release is ASU No. 2016-14, Not-for-Profit Entities (Topic 958): Presentation of Financial Statements of Not-for-Profit Entities, which you can find here.

Effective date

ASU 16-14 will be effective for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2017.

Let’s translate that… it will first be effective for calendar year December 31, 2018 financial statements. For NPOs with fiscal year ends, it will be effective for 6/30/19 or 9/30/19.

Since 6/30/16 audits are underway, for a rough ballpark figure three years from now for required implementation.

Early application is permitted.

Really fast intro

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Jim Ulvog

Wounded Warrior Project releases financial statements and 990 for year ending September 30, 2015.

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

WWP has released their fiscal year 2015 990 information tax return and audited financial statements.

Keep in mind these are for the year ended September 30, 2015, which is well before the media firestorm erupted in January 2016. Thus, there will be no impact visible in these reports from any turmoil in calendar year 2016, other than a brief comment in subsequent events note.

You can find the front page of the financial section of their website here.

The archived financial reports from 2015 back through 2006 are here.

The 990 for 9/30/15 is here.

The audited financial statement for 9/30/15 is here.

A few initial observations:

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Jim Ulvog

After reading about the mess World Vision is in, ask yourself what you are doing to prevent a similar disaster from disrupting your programs.

Question this manager is pondering: Do we have good enough controls to prevent this from happening in our field programs? Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Question this manager is pondering: Are our controls good enough to prevent something like this from happening in our field programs?
Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

A few articles to follow up on the accusations a World Vision manager allegedly routed aid money to a terrorist organization.

  • Looks like the situation with the Gaza branch of World Vision could turn into an accounting argument.
  • Response from World Vision.
  • Other aid workers charged.
  • Finally, more questions for managers and finance teams to ponder.

A number of public comments on twitter are claiming the total budget for the Gaza branch is only $2.2M a year.

Some people making this comment usually continue the discussion by calling into question the entire set of accusations from the Israeli government because the current claim is the manager diverted approximately $7 million a year.

This position implies that accusations of diverting $7M a year when the budget is only $2.2M means the accusations are untrue.

8/8 – AP, The Big Story – World Vision: Israeli charges based on “huge gap” in numbers – Article points out the intelligence agency accuses the program manager of diverting food, agricultural equipment, and medical supplies in addition to currency. That means there was in-kind material as well as heavy equipment.

The accounting argument appears towards the end of the article. A Foreign Ministry representative is guessing that the stated budget does not include in-in-kind donations.

A World Vision representative in Germany says the budget of $22.2M for the Gaza office over the last decade does include in-kind materials.

So, we may wind up with this being an accounting issue in addition to a loaded political issue on top of an alleged defalcation issue carrying over into alleged terrorism funding issue.

8/9 – Al Jazeera – Christian charity ‘top of Israel’s target list’ – It will help you filter news you hear about the manager of the Gaza office if you keep in mind the visible political agenda you will see in much reporting.

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Jim Ulvog

Initial reaction to alleged diversion of World Vision funds

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
How can you tell who is really behind the mask, and what is he doing inside your organization? Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Last week, the Israeli intelligence service accused a World Vision manager of diverting resources to Hamas. The allegation is he diverted about 60% of the annual funds flowing through the Gaza office, with the amount diverted allegedly around $7M a year.

Some initial reactions are surfacing from donors. Also, some context for magnitude of the alleged amount. Finally, some questions to ponder for leaders of charities and those of us who audit NPOs.

8/4 – World Vision – Statement on World Vision Staff Arrest – Full statement from World Vision. Doesn’t say a lot because they don’t yet know a lot. I’m sure there will be more comments as the situation develops.

8/5 – Reuters at Business Insider – Australia suspends World Vision funding over allegations its Gaza representative funneled millions to Hamas – The Australian government has provided about $4.4 million over the last three years to World Vision for use in helping people living in Gaza and West Bank. The aid has been suspended over the allegations.

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Jim Ulvog

How do you keep one person from diverting funds and causing a front-page fiasco for your charity? World Vision illustration.

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

How do you keep one person from creating a public relations fiasco or, even worse, damaging the reputation of your entire organization? How do you keep a manager from illegally diverting a huge amount of resources?

What controls and procedures do you have in place to prevent something like this in your organization?

Let’s start with a FBI agent who pled guilty to charges of passing sensitive and classified information to a Chinese government official and businesses in China.

8/1 – ABC News – FBI Employee Arrested for Allegedly Acting as Secret Chinese Agent – According to the story, we can drop the word ‘allegedly.’ This week he entered a guilty plea to one felony charge. The government claims he was gathering sensitive and classified material based on instructions from his handler.

He was born in China and was naturalized in 1985 at age 16.

So, the FBI with all its investigative powers and intentional counter-intelligence operations was not able to prevent this man from being an agent of the Chinese government.

So what chance does a nonprofit charity have of filtering out people who want to do bad stuff? That is something to consider as we grieve the following story.

This week the story broke that a manager of the Gaza office of World Vision allegedly diverted a lot of money to Hamas for use in terrorist activities. At this point the story consists of allegations, but allegations from the Israeli security service after a few weeks of interrogation are extremely serious.

8/4 – Hareetz – Top Official in Christian Aid Group Charged With Funneling Funds to Hamas – The security service, Shin Bet, arrested the director of the Gaza branch office on June 16. He was indicted Thursday.

Shin Bet accuses the manager of joining an armed wing of Hamas in 2004 and being sent to infiltrate a western aid organization a year later.

In 2005 he was hired by World Vision and in 2010 was promoted to director of the Gaza branch.

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Jim Ulvog

Perhaps reporting under GAAP is not reporting the numbers investors need

Image courtesy DollarPhotoClub
Image courtesy DollarPhotoClub

(Cross post from my other blog, Attestation Update. I usually post comments on accounting theory there. This issues carries over directly to the nonprofit community. Consider the ongoing discussion on the mis-focus on ‘overhead’ and the need for some sort of outcome measures for the charity world and you can see how this applies.)

Consider this idea: perhaps GAAP-based accounting numbers aren’t giving stock investors all the information they need.

What is wrong with this picture?

In April, Netflix announced their earnings fell short of analysts’ expectations. Usually that would drop the stock price. What happened?

Nexflix stock jumped 18%.

Huh?

What could cause that? The market supposedly has incorporated the consensus into the price. Missing the expectation should drop the price.

Consider this: At the same time, Netflix announced their new-subscribers were 4.9 million instead of the expectation of 4.0M.

That means they will have stronger earnings for the next several quarters than was expected the day before the announcement. Thus, the stock price rose.

Investors looked at the new subscriber tally as a better indicator of future earnings and thus future stock price than this quarter’s GAAP net income. New subscribers is more important than EPS.

If you wonder are wondering why GAAP EPS isn’t the driving force in that story, here is a brain stretcher for you:

“The End of Accounting”

Professors Baruch Lev and Feng Gu point to The End of Accounting and the Path Forward for Investors and Managers in their June 21 Wall Street Journal article.

You can find the book at Amazon here. It is a bit steep, $32 in hardback and $26 in Kindle format, which is really high for an e-book. I already have a copy on my e-reader. Started reading it yesterday.

The professors suggest that reported earnings under GAAP are losing relevance for investors as we move further and further away from an industrial economy. When know-how, processes, patents, using the internet, and other intangibles are the source of income, GAAP doesn’t report useful information for figuring out future earnings.

By the way, keep in mind that providing historical information to readers of the financial statements to allow them to make estimates of future earnings and cash flows of the company is, like, sorta’, kinda’, the purpose of GAAP financial statements.

The problem with GAAP

Some drawbacks in looking at GAAP numbers, according to the professors:

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Jim Ulvog

New overtime rules go into effect December 2016

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

It is only a few months until lots more people must be paid time-and-a-half for the actual hours worked beyond 40 a week. This will likely affect a huge number of charities and churches.

Just so you get the picture, after 12/1/16 your charity will need to track the actual hours for any full-time administrative staff or program managers earning less than about $47K and pay them for all hours worked over 40 per week.

Here are two more articles providing an intro to the issue.

5/23 – Associations Now – Overtime rule released: how organizations can prepare – additional discussion on how to start planning for the new overtime rules.

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Jim Ulvog

Overview of new lease accounting rules

Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com before they merged into Adobe Stock.
Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com before they merged into Adobe Stock.

In about three years there will be a complete overhaul of the accounting rules for leases.

For a quick introduction to the changes, here are a few of the comments in a recent AICPA webinar.  I will keep this nontechnical.

“Right of use” asset

The basic concept is that a lease contract gives you the right to control the use of property, equipment, office space, or some other identified asset for a specific period of time. The economic substance is that the asset is yours to use for the term of the lease.

By creating a “right of use”, the lease contract gives you an asset that needs to be reflected on the balance sheet. In addition the liability for future payments needs to be recognized.

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Jim Ulvog

It is time for charities to focus on the new overtime rules

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

The Department of Labor announced on 5/18/16 that new overtime rules will go into effect on December 1, 2016. That is about six months from now.

In one over-summarized sentence, here is the deal: for employees paid less than $47,476 annually, the employer needs to develop a system to track actual hours worked so employees are paid for overtime hours, with very narrow exceptions for charities.

Employees paid over that amount must still meet the previous requirements for job duties and be paid on salary basis to avoid the overtime requirement. The threshold will be revised every three years.

In case you don’t immediately see some implementation issues, then think about your super-dedicated first level supervisors paid less than $48K and ask yourself if you know how many hours they spend outside the office answering emails and how many extra hours they spend in the office beyond what they are scheduled.

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Jim Ulvog