Nonprofit finance, accounting, and tax news. Other tidbits of interest to the charity community.
Christianity Today points to a study which starts to answer the question. Their article What’s a Congregation Worth? provides a nice illustration of a 1997 study by Professor Ram Cnaan.
In his study, he quantifies an urban congregation contributes around $140,000 of value to the local community. CT states he updated his estimate to $476,000 in 2009.
Some of the factors quantified:
I have written a 3-hour online CPE course called Compilation and Review: Practice Issues (Third Edition). It is now available at the CCH Learning Center website.
Here’s what the course covers, from the CCH site:
Maintain dual control over the offering! You hear that unending refrain from us accountants.
Document those disbursements! Another routine comment you hear.
One story in scriptures has a good illustration of the first control along with missing the boat on the second idea. Jehoiada, the priest during the reign of King Joash, did a good job on the dual control over the offering and not so great on accountability for the disbursements.
Update on my post about how Taco Bell is using social media as an integrated part of their response to a lawsuit which raised severe allegations against them.
On April 19 the plaintiff dropped her lawsuit. The law firm claimed that the restaurant chain revised the marketing and product disclosure.
Taco Bell has a quick response saying they changed nothing in their recipe, paid nothing to the plaintiff, and did not make a settlement.
Their use of social media is what’s of most interest to me.
Might be time for all of us to pay more attention to privacy issues on the technology we use. This has not been a good week in terms of privacy developments.
Using an iPhone or phone in the Android family? Did you know your location is being tracked regularly and reported back to Apple and Google?
Previous posts here, here, and here have discussed a report from La Piana Consulting called Convergence- How Five Trends Will Reshape the Social Sector.
One personal observation. (more…)
Various news reports suggest that inflation is returning to the economy. See this article from the AP for one example: That’s pricey: 13 items that cost more, or will.
Officials of the Federal Reserve indicate the recent price increases won’t be sustained.
I decided to do some checking on my own.
I pulled down the CPI data for a look-see. See this post for links to get the data yourself.
Inflation statistics are available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a part of the US Department of Labor.
Previously mentioned the expanded 1099 reporting that would have gone into effect in 2012. This would have required all businesses and ministries to report on 1099s the payments to any vendor over $600. The major change in the rules is the exception for incorporated businesses would have gone away.
On 3-14-11 the President signed legislation that repeals the expanded reporting requirement.
Previous posts here and here mentioned four emerging trends identified by La Piana Consulting in their report called Convergence- How Five Trends Will Reshape the Social Sector. Will now discuss the last trend they have noticed.
As mentioned previously, I will be quoting from their report a lot.
“Sector boundaries are blurring” – (more…)
ECFA has announced the membership of the Commission on Accountability and Policy for Religious Organizations. This is the task force ECFA has assembled to provide feedback requested by U.S. Sen. Grassley.
Click here for my previous comments on the commission, which provides general background.
I have four posts up at Attestation Update discussing how SSARS 19 says the accountant should deal with possible fraud and illegal acts encountered while performing compilations and reviews.
Click on any of the following links that look like a good place to start:
Previous post mentioned the first two emerging trends identified by La Piana Consulting in their report called Convergence- How Five Trends Will Reshape the Social Sector. Will discuss two more trends in this post.
As mentioned before, I will be quoting from their report. Notice lots of quotation marks.
“Networks enable work to be organized in new ways” – (more…)
(duplicate of post at Attestation Update)
Uh, oh. In part four of the Journal of Accountancy’s interview with FASB chair Leslie Seidman, she made it clear that the comments at the FASB’s website about their meeting in February do not mean they are changing the direction they’re going on leases.
They still intend to bring most material leases on to the balance sheet.
A few more observations on the data presented in an ECFA webinar with Brian Kluth, of Maximum Generosity, as the speaker. Previous post here discussed three-year trends.
Change in general giving (without designated funds or building projects). The executive summary uses seven categories to describe the level of change. I have combined the data into three categories. Summarized changes in general giving: