Nonprofit finance, accounting, and tax news. Other tidbits of interest to the charity community.
In the back of the mind, most ministry and business leaders want to be “the best in the world”. With the way we think of that phrase, it is extremely difficult to achieve that level.
Seth Godin, in his book The Dip, offers a different perspective on what that phrase means when he explains the definition of best and world. A change in focus means it is possible to be best in the world.
How do we make life better for people?
Is there a relationship between the level of economic freedom in a country and the level of income, life expectancy, civil rights, and a cleaner environment? Is there an inverse relationship between the level of economic freedom and the level of corruption, infant mortality, and child labor?
The answer to both questions is yes.
The higher the level of economic freedom is in a country, the higher the level of those good things. With more freedom there are less of those bad things. See this very innovative, creative video, from the Charles Koch Foundation, for a visual explanation:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1U1Jzdghjk&feature=player_embedded]
Quick summary of the retroactive reinstatement available for small NPOs whose exempt status was revoked. Post is Exempt Status Retroactive Reinstatement by Katie Thomas, CPA on the Nonprofit GPS blog.
The retroactive reinstatement is only available to smaller organizations, those with income under $50,000. Larger organizations who wish to get their exempt status back will be nonexempt from May 2010 through the date of the new application for exemption.
In California there were 33,733 organizations whose exempt status was revoked.
I previously discussed this issue here.
New cartoon is available at Once Upon Internal Control.
Good procedures protect against false accusations – feature cartoon #2 from Once Upon Internal Control illustrates another way that good procedures can protect your staff. Cartoon runs about 8 1/2 minutes.
The first feature cartoon is here.
What if a replicator, like you see in the sci-fi movies, was a reality?
People who have developed the technology call it 3-D printing.
When is it time to push through the obstacles and keep trying to achieve?
That is the topic of Seth Godin’s book, The Dip. Since the book was written in 2007, I am late to the party. Still want to write about it because most people I talk to are not familiar with his work.
We need to distinguish between cliffs, cul-de-sacs, and dips.
The headline of a great article, Foreign Payees, Activities, and Financial Accounts Increase Your Compliance Burden, points towards an answer of yes.
CPAs Daniel Skerbitz and Laurie Gnad, of Stanfield & O’Dell, provide a great introduction to the extra reporting paperwork that arises for overseas missions or even dealing with foreign missionaries when they are in the U.S.
Seth Godin asks which of the following four things are getting in your way:
You don’t know what to do
You don’t know how to do it
You don’t have the authority or the resources to do it
You’re afraid
Figure out what is blocking you. Everyone of those things is a very serious obstacle. Name it. Figure out how to go around, under, or over to get past. Find a battering ram if you have to.
I had hit a block on my cartoons. Reading the above post helped me identified the block. Unfortunately, it took me a week or two to remove the obstacle but I did. I’m moving forward again.
Figure out what is in the way of you getting done what you really want to do and just blast it to smithereens.
Seth Godin reposted his tips on how to make e-mail less painful for recipients, and you. He did this
in the naive hope that it would eliminate (or perhaps merely reduce) the ridiculous CC-to-all emails about the carpool, the fake-charity forwards, the ALL CAPS yelling and the stupid PR spam.
See his 36 tips here.
My favorite:
Common problems to avoid in employment law – post by Katie Morell at AmEx Open Forum:
3 Legal Landmines You Must Avoid
Extremely short version:
I didn’t post on this earlier. Then came across this great article that said what I had in mind.
Core Inflation Rises – Interest Rates May Follow, by James C. Cooper. Couple of good graphs in the article along with the great discussion.
In May 2011, the core inflation rate was 0.3% while the posted CPI was 0.2%. (more…)
Posted a discussion on IFRS at my other blog, Attestation Update. Post is: Arguments for adopting IFRS are weak, arguments against have validity. Therefore we obviously should adopt IFRS.
Perhaps you can tell from the title, I’m not persuaded IFRS is a good idea. If you are interested in such things, check it out.
I have several posts about the mandatory report of overseas bank accounts. This issue can easily involve NPOs that have overseas operations. The form used to report and the whole process is referred to as FBAR. Actual name is Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts.
Extension of deadline
The IRS has extended a deadline for filing the FBAR reports for 2009 and earlier. The new deadline is November 1, 2011.
This means “persons” could catch up on the filing of all those reports that had never been filed. Persons include NPOs with bank accounts used in overseas projects.
By the way, the extension does not apply to the 12-31-10 reports which must be filed by 6-30-11.
Verne Hargrave, at Faith-Based Accounting, has a one word answer. See his post: Question #4 – “should our childcare workers be treated as employees or independent contractors.” Straight to the point.