A different perspective on what ails the critique of what ails the nonprofit sector

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.

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Jim Ulvog

Major article in Journal of Accountancy explains framework for determining GIK valuation

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.

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Jim Ulvog

Guest Post – Cash Conversion Cycle of Donors

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.

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Jim Ulvog

Guest Post – Forecasting Annual Church Revenues: Live spreadsheet to illustrate the forecasting model – part 5

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. especially when he posts spreadsheets.

He has about seven years experience as an auditor working on the issues discussed on this blog. This is the final post in a five-part series.

By Jeff Beaumont, CPA

For those that would find it helpful to have a spreadsheet demonstration of how to venture your luck at forecasting a church’s revenue, I am uploading the model I use. It has dummy numbers and information, of course.

My goal in it is to help others by providing a resource that they can

  • A) use for their church,
  • B) modify for their church, or
  • C) get an understanding of what the previous blog posts were explaining.

If you find it helpful—great!

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Jim Ulvog

Overcome fear and keep going

Mark Williams shares the amazing story of his grandfather.  What an encouragement to all of us to persevere in the midst of life’s trials.

The ship carrying his grandfather to the new world, the S.S. Norge, sank crossing the Atlantic in 1904. Eskild Alfred Eskildsen helped women and children get into the lifeboats. When the boats were full, he helped get life jackets on the remaining women and children.

When the ship was about to go under, he got a life jacket and swam out to the furthest boats. Why?

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Jim Ulvog

Covering the controlled territory, battles, and casualties of the Civil War in a very short video? A superb creative visualization.

How’s this for a very creative visualization? A four-minute video that tells the story of the American Civil War through the amount of territory controlled by the Union and Confederate forces with mention of major battles and a casualty counter in the corner.

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum created The Civil War in Four Minutes.

You can view the video here at what appears to be the only authorized place to host it.

Update on 1/19/19: Video is no longer available online. You need to buy a copy if you want to see it. A bootleg copy can be found online, but I won’t link to it.

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Jim Ulvog

More good stuff on overhead ratios and “worst charities” – 9-9-13

Some more articles that are worth attention but I don’t have enough time to comment in a full post. Not a lot going on that I’ve been reading until I saw two articles in two days.

Here’s a few articles exploring the challenges of outcome measures, whether NPOs are spending enough on infrastructure, possible regulatory revisions in Florida, and is anyone criticizing the practices in the “worst charities” articles?

Previous lists of good stuff here and here.

“Overhead ratio”

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Jim Ulvog

Guest Post – Forecasting Annual Church Revenues: Using Trends and Cycles to Help Predict Future Revenues – part 4

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. This is the fourth post in a series.

By Jeff Beaumont, CPA

Part 4– Final thoughts

Introduction is here. Description of forecasting model is here. Calculations discussed here.

Okay, once the research is complete, we can put together a fair and reasonably accurate estimation of tithes and offerings for budgeting for next year.

Next, the smell test. I have learned the necessity of this. So if the model says next year will increase by 5-10%, I should look at what has happened in the past (at least with the past I won’t have to make any guesses since it already happened!).

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Jim Ulvog

3rd blogiversary

Last week, August 28th, marked the third blogiversary of my lead blog.

Many thanks to those who have stopped by to read. By now you have sensed that I’m having a blast in this blogging journey.

In celebration, I’d like to provide a few stats for my three main blogs. I realize my sites are infinitesimally small in the overall blogosphere. Yet I hope in some small way stats from a small site might be an encouragement to current bloggers and others thinking of jumping into the fun world of blogging.

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Jim Ulvog

The world is complicated – the ‘you-can’t-even-just-hand-out-a-wad-of-cash’ chapter

I don’t understand why, but there has been a lot of tweeting in the twitter world about the wonders of addressing poverty by just giving everyone a handful of cash. That would make a number of aid issues a lot easier to deal with.

However…..

The world is complicated. Everything has unexpected side issues.

An experienced worker in the aid field who maintain anonymity by self-identifying as “J” writes at AidSpeak.

He explains why even giving cash away is difficult in his post, Cash.

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Jim Ulvog

Guest Post – Forecasting Annual Church Revenues: Using Trends and Cycles to Help Predict Future Revenues – part 3

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. This is the third in a series.

By Jeff Beaumont, CPA

Part 3 – Calculations

Introduction is here. Description of forecasting model is here.

You still with me?

Good.

Trying to figure out how to forecast revenue for nonprofits is quite a sticky issue. After all, it is much simpler to try to forecast revenue for a company that sells some product, say, bread, soda, or gasoline. There is a reasonable understanding that people need (or want) those items.

For a financial model, there is the term “financial driver” which means anything that affects the rise and fall of revenues, expenses, etc. The four categories for revenue drivers are: (more…)

Jim Ulvog

Charity pushes back against CNN and Tampa Bay Times. CNN stands firm.

The charity at the top of the America’s Worst Charities list compiled by the Tampa Bay Times, Center for Investigative Research and CNN, Kids Wish Network, is pushing back against the methodology. You can see the detail about the Times’ reporting on the charity here.

(This post will be a deep inside-baseball discussion.)

You can see the rebuttal here.

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Jim Ulvog

Template for analyzing financial data of charities that are in the news

If you want to see an example of how to analyze the financial statements of a charity that has lots of GIK or lots of telemarketing costs or lots of publicity, check out Brian Mittendorf’s illustration at Counting on Charity: When Summary Accounting Metrics Fall Short:  The Case of Breast Cancer Charities of America.

In that post he analyzes the financial statements of that charity. Using that post as an example, here’s a few steps you can take:

Start with total revenue, total expenses, and total program costs.

Look at the GIK, especially if it is going places or has uses other than what otherwise would seem to be the core programs. Subtract that from revenue and expenses. That exact same amount also comes out of program costs.

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Jim Ulvog

“Your help is hurting” – More unintended consequences

“The world is complicated.”

In a video from PovertyCure, Peter Greer tells the story I mentioned earlier of how in just one summer help from a U.S. church destroyed the egg market in a small Rwandan village.

Second hand clothes sent to Kenya destroyed the textile manufacturing industry and the cotton farms. Sad unintended consequences.

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ii_k_AUqo8I&t=197]

 

Superb quote from the video: (more…)

Jim Ulvog

Guest Post – Forecasting Annual Church Revenues: Using Trends and Cycles to Help Predict Future Revenues – part 2

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. This is the second in a series.

By Jeff Beaumont, CPA

Part 2 – Philosophy and foundation discussion

Introduction and encouragement to pastors is here.

We were forecasting revenue for the next year and knew we needed to be accurate. We needed to do our best to discern changes (be that attendance, economic changes, etc.) in the church that will affect revenue.

After the first year or two of using a flat percentage increase by looking at the past few years and trying to make a determination for the entire year’s revenue in under an hour (yes, that happens frequently in churches!), we realized our mistake to make it such a hasty and cursory decision-making process.

We then then took a different road. One that required more work but—hopefully—would be worth it in the end.

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Jim Ulvog