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Cindy Cumfer, Attorney at Law, is the coauthor of The Oregon Nonprofit Corporation Handbook.  For those of you who don't know Cindy, her practice is dedicated entirely to helping nonprofit organizations.  She recently launched a website where she provides useful information for any nonprofit.  One of her recent topics covers the rise of fraud and embezzlement in the nonprofit sector.  Please check out her article here for a few quick but extremely important steps you can follow to help prevent fraud and embezzlement in your organization.  She also offers some excellent sample forms and policies on her website.

If you would like additional sample policies, please contact us.

On March 22nd, the Nonprofit Fiscal Managers Association is offering a workshop on Calculating the ROI of Your Fundraising Activities.  This is an excellent opportunity to learn how to measure the effectiveness of your fundraising, how to create a development dashboard, and how to predict your organization's income trends.  For more information about this workshop, or to register to attend please follow this link.  We hope to see you there!

Next Wednesday, March 7th, the Nonprofit Association of Oregon's Executive Directors Network is holding a workshop on Dashboard Reporting: Track & Measure Organizational Effectiveness.  This year Susan Matlack Jones & Associates is proud to be a lead sponsor of the Executive Directors Network!  This workshop will be helpful and informative for any nonprofit organization, and we hope you can join us there.  To learn more about the workshop or to register to attend, please click here.

Last month we celebrated our 25th anniversary with a bang!  Over 100 people showed up and the party was a huge success.  Thank you to all of our clients, friends, family, and colleagues for making it a grand celebration.  Here's to 25 more!

Last week Rob Bennett, the executive director of Portland Sustainability Institute, published a great op-ed in the Huffington Post about green neighborhood development.  He brings up an intriguing correlation between the current global economy and the greening of cities that is, as Rob says, "emerging because of the financial crisis, not in spite of it".  Check out his article "From Green Building to Green Cities".  If you're interested in learning more about Portland Sustainability Institute check out their website www.pdxinstitute.org.

We want to send a huge congratulations to NW Dance Project - the only US company to make the finals for the Sadler's Wells "Global Dance Project"!  You can vote to help send them to perform in London and check out their video by clicking this link.  Also to learn more about the NW Dance Project or to buy tickets to an upcoming performance meander over to www.nwpdp.com.

This year we are super proud to be a lead sponsor of the Executive Directors Network (EDN) at the Nonprofit Association of Oregon.  Last year we were a supporting sponsor of the Nonprofit Fiscal Managers Association (NFMA).  Workshops for both the EDN and NFMA are starting up again in September/October, and the line up is intriguing.  If you are interested in becoming a season passholder or looking at the schedule of workshops please follow the link below.

Nonprofit Association of Oregon - Executive Directors Network

Nonprofit Association of Oregon - Nonprofit Fiscal Managers Association

A few days ago Blue Avocado (a nonprofit digital magazine that provides resources and articles for the nonprofit community) published an article titled "Get the Most Value from Your Audit".  As many of you know, audits are an investment and they can be expensive.  The reason why I am highlighting this article is because  it echoes one of our values at SMJ & Associates.  Exceptional bookkeeping, audits, and fiscal controls are not just musts, they are also valuable tools that can help an organization develop strong financial oversight and result in a more robust and sustainable institution.

A few highlights from the article include a list of the benefits of a good audit relationship, and two check lists - "Is our auditor doing a good job for us?" and "Are we doing a good job managing our audit?".  Both necessary questions for any nonprofit that receives an independent audit.  Besides just providing checklists, the article helps you assess your answers, and dive deeper into what your current audit relationship means for you. 

Blue Avocado - Get the Most Value from Your Audit

If you missed Kay Sohl's presentations this year at Nonprofit Association of Oregon on funding admin and overhead costs, check out part 5 of her Indirect Cost Series on the NAO website.  Also, if you are interested in consulting services around indirect allocation methods, creating internal fully-loaded allocation spreadsheets, or other nonprofit specific acc... Read More | Comments (0)

In the last blog post I wrote about the issues that arise when funders or donors evaluate a nonprofit solely based on the indirect costs to program costs ratio.  Last Friday, Rick Wartzman (the executive director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University), published a relevant article in Businessweek.

Wartzman’s article, The Charitable Challenge, emphasizes the ongoing need for donors to go further than just looking at this ratio when considering which nonprofit to support.  Wartzman cites several interesting resources, and gives a list from Give Smart (a guide for philanthropists) of questions that donors should engage to evaluate their relationships with nonprofits that they support.  The fourth question, “What will it take to get the job done?” is the central theme of the article. 

This brings up an important point that I didn’t address in my last post, mainly, that nonprofits should employ measurement internally to assess the outcomes of their programs and campaigns, and to develop plans for future endeavors based on this knowledge.  For smaller nonprofits, this might mean feeling comfortable with financial statements, and using them to access current and historic trends to get a handle on the organization’s financial position and health.  For larger nonprofits, this could be strategic and scenario planning, or connecting with other successful or innovative organizations in the field for perspective and communication.

 Since our clients range from volunteer-based organizations to organizations with $5 million operational budgets, look forward to a blog on tools to access your financial position, and a tutorial on reading and analyzing financial statements.  In the meantime, here’s a link to Wartzman’s article: The Charitable Challenge.