Whether your nonprofit is more like an intimate family or an enormous well-oiled machine, fraud can occur, and when it happens, it can damage your reputation, relationships with funders, and staff morale. In other words, you can't afford it. (Nonprofit Quarterly)
Maximizing Nonprofit Internal Controls: An Essential Guide for Even the Most Pure
With any luck, the dust is beginning to settle after a flurry of development activity during the calendar year end. Now is the time to inventory your organization’s fundraising practices and procedures to ensure that they are not only compelling but also legally compliant.
How can nonprofits' leaders and boards better mitigate their fraud risks? First and foremost, they should focus on governance. (Nonprofit Quarterly)
Sample reserve fund policy examples you can adapt for your organization provided by Propel Nonprofits.
Operating Reserves with Nonprofit Policy Examples
This signature authority policy serves as a sample of the permission to execute transactions established by relevant policies and permission to approve transactions for execution.
One of the most important responsibilities of a nonprofit board is fiscal oversight. Yet many board members remain unclear about what exactly that means. Nonprofit Risk Management Center's webinar, Fiscal Oversight, Risk and the Nonprofit Board, explores the board’s role in providing fiscal oversight and risk oversight. Learn how to inspire your board to strengthen its governance practices.
An audit committee is considered a best practice for nonprofits. It helps the governing board perform its fiduciary and financial oversight roles, reduce risk, and maintain donor confidence.
© North Carolina Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Inc. From Common Ground, a publication of the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits, www.ncnonprofits.org.
Additional resource:
The Internal Revenue Service released formal guidance related to nonprofit political activities in "Revenue Ruling 2007-41,' which describes 21 real-life scenarios. It is particularly useful for when nonprofits consider election-related programs and activities, since failure to comply may put at risk a nonprofit organization's tax-exempt status. (IRS)
Healthy nonprofit organizations employ financial management practices that build stability and flexibility both today and in the future. In Nonprofit Finance: 12 Golden Rules, Propel Nonprofits sets out the twelve golden rules for nonprofit finance, including budgeting, diverse funding sources, and interdependence.
This piece is good to share with board members as a base of commonly understood information that will help them manage loans better against the blips, delays and growth tracks in nonprofit finance.