Nonprofit finance, accounting, and tax news. Other tidbits of interest to the charity community.
Here are a few ideas in case you would like to find some financial info on a charity.
For donors, it is easy to find financial reports for charities you would like to support. For ministries, please understand how incredibly easy it is for your donors to find your financial data.
Barclays settled with US regulators over its role in the fiasco about manipulating Libor. I’ve mentioned that mess in my other blog. As a part of that settlement, they signed a deferred prosecution agreement.
They were already on probation for an earlier deferred prosecution agreement for money laundering.
A Wall Street Journal article, Corporate Probation: Punishing or Punting? by Michael Rothfeld, gives the details (article behind paywall).
The sad tragedy of fraud in a neighboring city is in the next to last chapter. Yesterday one of the admitted middleman in the Upland bribery scandal was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison.
The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin discusses the case and sentencing in their article Co-defendant in Pomierski case is sentenced to one year.
Previously I described the wages earned from a felony conviction.
Add to the high cost the probable loss of any professional credentials or state licensing necessary to do your job.
The Arizona Republic published three articles Sunday examining valuation issues for pharmaceutical GIKs at Food for the Hungry and Breast Cancer Society. They have joined the growing list of media outlets that have noticed issues in donated meds.
The articles, all by Robert Anglen, are: (more…)
The recession officially ended in June 2009, which means we’ve seen just over 3 years of recovery. GDP has finally passed the peak from before the recession. Yet it doesn’t quite feel like recovery, at least here in California. Saw another graph that shows why it feels so odd.
In a graph called The Zero Recovery, Tim Kane calculates the number of people who are employed as a percentage of the population. For the last six recessions he tracks the change in the employment to population ratio from the start of the recession. For the previous five recessions the drop wasn’t as severe as this one and there had been substantial recovery by the 4½ year point after the start of the recession.
August 29th marked the 2 year blogiversary of this little site (Nonprofit Update) to talk about nonprofit issues. I split off posts of interest to CPAs to another blog (Attestation Update) on October 14, 2010 and started Outrun Change on October 3, 2011. That site ponders the radical change around us and how we can stay ahead of it.
Thanks so much to those who have stopped by. I hope it has been a blessing to you. In case you can’t tell, I’ve been having a blast.
Most visitors and page views are coming in from internet search engines. That is really cool.
One of the best things in the last year is a growing number of people interested enough is my musings to follow by e-mail or Google RSS feed. Thanks very much for stopping by.
For the second year, I will report some stats for my sites. Here’s some stuff for those interested in such things. I will adjust this time around to an August 31 cutoff instead of the 29th. I’ll list stats for this year with the prior year in parentheses.
Food for the Hungry has prepared pro forma revisions to its 990s for 2007, 2008, and 2009. They are following the suggestion of Charity Navigators to revise the 990 amounts to reflect what would have been reported if the valuations used in 2010 had been applied in prior years. Previous post discussed that briefly.
You can find the revised amounts at their website by clicking the “about us” tab and then clicking the “Finances” tab.
At the bottom of the page you can find the downloadable audit reports and 990s for the last three years. Under the “Charity navigator exhibits” heading you can find an attestation letter from the audit committee here and the restated pro forma amounts for 2005 through 2009 here. The letter is in PDF format while the pro forma amounts are in an Excel spreadsheet.
I have not had time to analyze the numbers, let alone ponder the implications. Just wanted to get this information out, since it is very fresh. The letter from the audit committee chair is dated August 22.
Here is the total revenue amount, as reported on the 990 and as recalculated on a pro forma basis. The ’07, ’08, and ’09 amounts are from the template. I pulled the ’10 amounts from the tax return. The amount of revision is calculated along with the changed amount as a percentage of reported revenue. (more…)
Gamman & Grange reminds us that 12-31-12 is the deadline to request reinstatement of exempt status. This is a concern for NPOs that had their exempt status revoked because they went three years without filing a 990-N, which is the on-line ‘postcard’ notice to the IRS.
One of the big ironies in life is called unintended consequences – You try to do something good or helpful to fix a problem and there is some completely unexpected problem caused by the good & helpful thing.
Two examples from today’s reading. First, making forest fires worse. Second, getting sick from reusable grocery bags. My previous examples were from the international aid world.
My previous post described the settlement by Standard Chartered bank with the New York state Department of Financial Services for $340 million over allegations of money-laundering.
I also listed six other settlements I found in two Wall Street Journal articles here and here.
What is going on?
The cases leave me scratching my head wondering what’s going on in the big banks.
The British bank has agreed to a $340 million penalty to settle allegations from New York state regulators that the bank was laundering money for their Iranian customers. The Wall Street Journal describes a settlement in their article Bank Settles Iran Money Case. This is one in a long string of settlements for money-laundering.
The accusation by the New York Department of Financial Services is that over the course of a decade the bank hid Iranian involvement for 60,000 wires totaling $250 billion. The basic concept is the wires were withdrawn after initial submission and the identifying information removed from the transaction, then the instructions were resubmitted.
I touched on this in an earlier post.
Well, maybe the release of the draft Not-for-Profit Entities Audit and Accounting Guide isn’t quite as exciting as those ancient commercials announcing the release of the new phone book by showing people running around celebrating that it arrived. (The line was also in the movie The Jerk, starring Steve Martin.) For auditors of NPOs, the arrival of the long-expected audit guide is far better than what the old commercials would have you think about a new phone book.
The draft guide can be found here. The AICPA’s page for the draft is at Overhaul of the Not For Profit Entities Audit and Accounting Guide.
The AICPA’s announcement can be downloaded here. Some highlights, as described in their announcement: (more…)
Hood Sutton Robinson & Freeman CPAs, P.C. are the auditors for Blessings International. The firm issued a qualified opinion on the NPO’s financial statements for the years ended August 31, 2011 and 2010.
The reason for the qualified opinion is that purchased medicines are valued at Average Wholesale Price instead of the wholesale exit price in the principal market. The specific paragraph in the audit report reads: (more…)
(cross-post from Attestation Update.)
I’ve been following the corruption case in the city next to where I live. This post describes the sentencing and additional consequences of the fraud.
The mayor was accused of accepting bribes from a local business in return for helping them get back in business. In April 2012, he pled guilty to one count of bribery. The remaining 9 charges were dropped at the sentencing.
Yesterday he was sentenced to two years in federal prison.
Rich Karlgaard from Forbes thinks so. In his article, Recovery Drag: The Age of Cheats, he surveys the moral rot in sports, quickly touches on the rot in business and our political system and concludes we are in an Age of Cheats.
Is there something wrong in the sports world? Consider this:
Sosa was a former 165-pound rookie who weighed 220 pounds the year he banged out 66 homers, chasing McGwire’s 70.
A 55 pound bulk up?