Nonprofit finance, accounting, and tax news. Other tidbits of interest to the charity community.
Previously mentioned that in 2012 California charities retained 37% of the total proceeds raised by telemarketing firms. In New York, the percentage going to the charities was 38%.
The Michigan Attorney General released their report on telemarketing campaigns in the state for 2013 –
I previously used the publicly visible costs of a charity’s legal dispute to urge you to Please Try to Stay Out of Court. The costs in dollars and time can be high.
This advice is not anything new.
Turns out Abraham Lincoln gave that same advice to young attorneys. He said (more…)
What portion of telemarketing campaigns makes its way to charities for whom the campaigns were conducted?
Here’s the 2012 results based on two recent articles:
The articles:
California increases minimum wage from $8 to $9 per hour starting July 1, 2014. Another increase to $10 starts January 1, 2016, two years from now.
This affects the minimum that employers can pay their staff.
It also has another impact – on determining if other staff are exempt from overtime rules.
Five more examples of unintended consequences. The problem? People don’t always do what you tell them. They often do something totally different from what you expected.
Cracked describes 5 Laws That Made Senses on Paper (And Disasters in Reality). (Caution, moderate number of naughty words.) These examples are from government. My three favorites are how to:
Gun buybacks increase number of guns on the street. (more…)
Tech tools available today make it easy for a novice to create usable videos. No one will confuse what you create with what comes out of Hollywood or Madison Avenue, but it won’t cost thousands of dollars per minute of content either.
To show how easy it is, I’ve accumulated several of my videos and briefly discussed them on my other blog, Outrun Change:
Here is my most popular video, with over 3,600 views:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qeibzgSemY]
Making videos is incredibly easy. I hope my simple efforts will encourage you to try it yourself.
Keep in mind I’m working with a point-and-shoot camera, have zero editing experience, and possess a level of creativity that is only slightly higher than the average accountant.
Equipment that is not cheapest on the market, some minimal experience, and measurable levels of creativity combined with the astounding tools available today would result in great video for your organization.
Jump in, the water’s fine!
The New York Times has a great article introducing Evernote as a storage tool for all the stray web articles, spreadsheets and photos that don’t have a logical home otherwise (cross-posted from my other blog, Attestation Update).
Check out An App That Will Never Forget a File.
Here is an intro to a superb tool: (more…)
Heroes I’m aware of would disagree they should be so labeled.
The comment I’ve often read is such heroes say they just did what anyone else would have done in the circumstances.
Well, no one else was in that circumstance, but they were. And they stood up to do a difficult job that was set before them.
On this Veterans Day, I salute one group of such heroes – the Doolittle Raiders. This weekend they held their last reunion.
My salute is a video shot during the 2013 Chino airshow. It is views of B-25s during a flyover.
In showing B-25s, I salute the Doolittle Raiders. In saluting them, I’m saluting all the heroes from WWII who served. By doing that I also salute all the heroes we don’t know of and all the others who did their job fighting to give us our freedom.
To all our heroes:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahhMvZdrO90&feature=player_detailpage]
Please remember as you watch the video I’m an accountant with a point-and-shoot camera, not a videographer or even a photographer. Yeah, yeah, I know it shows. (My video was very shaky. I allowed the YouTube software to stabilize the images. That produced the jumpy sides in the video. That’s a minor distraction in return for a huge jump in visual quality.)
Doolittle Raiders
I’m just getting to some news from back in early September. A veterans charity settled a lawsuit from the California Attorney General. The AG asserted excess compensation and diversion of funds to personal use.
My summary is based on these articles:
The settlement contains several terms:
Christianity Today has a brief update on the church lending scene in their article Churches: The New Risky Bet.
The article starts with almost good news of a megachurch in Florida that will meet their requirement of a multimillion balloon payment this year, but only by selling their property to the city and leasing it back for Sunday and Wednesday services.
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.
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