How can you make budgets more effective and valuable for your nonprofit organization? The answer lies in changing people’s perspectives on budgets. You need to move them away from thinking that budgets are only an operational requirement and instead move them to view budgets as a core part of an organization’s culture and aspirations for a brighter future.

This template provides a basic set of Board resolutions to authorize the final steps of dissolving a nonprofit organization. These sample resolutions are intended for relatively straightforward dissolutions and include language authorizing actions such as carrying out the plan of dissolution, filing Articles of Dissolution, filing the organization’s final Form 990, and more.

Ben and Mike answer questions from subscribers about why depreciation should be included in a nonprofit organization’s budget, the viability of consultants forming a new nonprofit to pursue grant opportunities to fund their work, the pros and cons of taking out a line of credit, and who is authorized to sign the final Form 990 for a dissolving organization.

The problem with financial dashboards is that everybody has a different idea about what makes up a “perfect” dashboard. Opinions are important and the sharing of those opinions through a collaborative process will be value-added. However, the most important question is not whether a financial dashboard is “perfect” but whether it is “useful” to as many people as possible.

The purpose of this template budget assumptions spreadsheet is to help nonprofit organizations to document and reflect on the assumptions for individual revenue and expense items that make up their annual budgets. This spreadsheet includes space to show individual departments and accounts within multiple-entity or single-entity structures, compare amounts used in past budgets (projected and actual numbers), a monthly breakout for budget planning, notes to capture details about assumptions and future plans, and more.

Ben and Mike answer questions from subscribers about navigating the instability of fundraising and donations, options for newspapers and journalistic organizations that are exploring 501(c)(3) status to access donations and grants, whether a new nonprofit organization should change its fiscal year when formation process has been slower than expected, and addressing indemnification language in an organization’s Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws.

As financial professionals, we are immersed in the language of finance and all its silent and not-so-silent nuances. To everyone else, the language of finance is often mysterious at best and frightening to many. We must constantly remind ourselves to strive to make the language of finance accessible to non-financial managers, Board members, and staff and build their financial acumen and confidence.

Why are nonprofit financial reports often ignored by people who have been entrusted with operational management and fiduciary oversight roles?  This important question needs to be considered first as a statement of fact and second as a priority “call-to-action” to help optimize finding real-world solutions. We must recognize the reality that on-time and error-free financial reports are not enough by themselves if these same financial reports are hard to read, difficult to access, and generally not beneficial to Board members, management, staff, and other people who will be using and reading these reports.