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No Budget, No Mission: A Guide to Basic Nonprofit Budgeting
What has always drawn me to a nonprofit organization is the mission. The mission of an organization speaks in ways that numbers do not. The mission instills hope, meaningful change, and impact. It elicits images of a stronger community and evokes the p …
Accounting Procedures Manual Template
Has “Create an Accounting Procedures Manual” been on your To Do list for several months now? For several years? You aren’t alone. We often stumble on this task for two, curiously contradictory reasons: Creating an Accounting Procedures Manua …
Get the Most Value from Your Audit
Audits are expensive in terms of money, staff time, and board attention. CPA Dennis Walsh tells us how to wring the most value from them: An IRS tax audit has been described as an autopsy without the benefit of death. The financial statement …
Outsource Your Bookkeeping!
The most strategic decision you make regarding how to staff your accounting department may be to not staff it at all. Well, at least not with employees of your organization. Outsourced accounting — having the accounting done by an outside person …
Nonprofit Bookkeeping Test
If you’re not an accountant yourself, it can be hard to hire a qualified bookkeeper. How can you tell if an applicant really knows bookkeeping? CPA Dennis Walsh created this terrific assessment test you can give candidates for bookkeeping and ac …
How to Hire a Great Accountant for Your Nonprofit
For many executive directors, hiring an accountant is fraught with anxiety. How will we find the right person? How can I tell if someone really knows accounting? Will an accountant fit in with the rest of us? As difficult as it is to hire a good accoun …
An Agreed-Upon-Procedures (AUP) Success Story
An Agreed-Upon-Procedures Engagement is one where an auditor performs tests on only a portion of the organization’s finances, and can therefore be done at much lower cost. CPA Dennis Walsh discusses how this little-used process could be utilized more f …
Seven Ways to Reduce Your Audit Costs
Too many of us think of audit costs as an expense to suffer, not to manage. CPA Dennis Walsh tells us differently: Executive Director Blair Benson of the Mental Health Association in Greensboro, North Carolina, was hoping her audit costs wou …
Nonprofit Budgets Have to Balance: False!
As nonprofits serving people and communities in these difficult financial times, we don’t expect things to turn around for our communities in the near future. Many of us are wondering: how can we achieve a balanced budget in these times? When is it oka …
