Tag Archives: Accountability

Financial Management

Posted on September 30, 2009 | Leave a comment

MFMP-logoI have written before about creating policies for your nonprofit. Now nonprofits have a new tool they can easily use to create their own financial management policies and plans. The Nonprofit Risk Management Center has a new tool called My Financial Management Plan where users can go through up to 21 different modules on nonprofit financial and accounting topics to create a variety of policies and procedures to help manage, organize and streamline their financial operations. From the Risk Management Center:

Nonprofit leaders have spent countless hours developing the necessary components of a financial management plan. But for many organizations the components, from an annual budget, return on investment strategy, cash flow planning tool and more, remain disparate. The nonprofit lacks a cohesive plan that reflects the organization’s commitment to the effective stewardship of its assets. My Financial Management Plan was created to guide leaders in updating the components of their financial management systems and integrating these components into a cohesive plan. This powerful system features covers topics such as Board Fiduciary Obligations, Managing Fraud Risk, Managing Cash Flow, Return on Investment Analysis, Cost Allocation, Classifying Net Assets, Managing Cash Flow, Budgeting, the form 990 and Grants and Contributions.

My Financial Management Plan is a powerful tool to turn financial management strategies, policies and protocols into a plan that will help your nonprofit demonstrate both competence and accountability. Use the “Plan Modules” feature to go through the 22 system modules. Each module offers the opportunity to upload existing material from your financial management system, create new content (based on our templates or created “on the fly”), or skip sections you don’t wish to use. Use the “Manage My Plan” feature to edit your draft plan, upload supporting PDF files and view/download your plan. The system also features a classroom with easy-to-understand articles and resources on a wide range of financial management topics.

I was fortunate enough to work on this project and create a lot of the module content. I know that this will be a great tool for nonprofits to learn about what they need know about with regards to their nonprofit’s finances and creating the appropriate policies and procedures to ensure good financial stewardship. For those not ready to buy access to the program you can register with the site to receive periodic email updates on nonprofit financial issues.

If you have any questions or comments about the program please let me know via email or in the comments below.

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Posted in Governance, IRS, Nonprofit Accounting, Policies and Procedures, Q&A, Risk Management, Tax Forms

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Human Resources for Nonprofits Update

Posted on August 10, 2009 | Leave a comment

News StandThis post is focused on some of the latest developments and issues in human resources, issues that can affect all nonprofit organizations that have employees.

Let’s start with the I-9 form. All employers are required to have these filled out by their employees.  Federal agencies are stepping up their compliance audits of companies in an effort to crack down on illegal immigrants by going after employers. It is best to make sure you have these from all of your employees.

Does your nonprofit use interns? Do you use those interns as a pool of potential employees?  Then this article might be of interest to you.

In any issue involving human resources your documentation is key. From setting performance expectations to defending yourself in court, a solid paper trail can only help. This article list seven major mistakes to avoid.

Hiring employees can be an expensive and time consuming process. As much as we strive to make the best matches not every new-hire works out. This piece has some great advice for those doing the hiring and includes questions to ask potential employees that may help us make better hiring decisions.

Your nonprofit has a policy to only pay overtime pay if approved in advance but an employee is claiming overtime hours worked that were not approved in advance. What do you do?

A disaster waiting to happen or a boon to employers? This article talks about this service from CareerBuilder.com where employers can search for information regarding potential, and current, employee’s online life. Searches of people  can be done without this service but I think this straddles the issue of work-life vs. private-life a little too much.

“That type of behavior goes on here all the time.” is not a sufficient defense against a harassment claim. All managers need to take harassment claims seriously to protect both employees and employers.

Finally, sometimes it is the little things, things that you might think will have no repercussions that get us into trouble. Here is an example of an employee who didn’t like being refereed to by his nickname on the job.

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Posted in Policies and Procedures, Risk Management

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Creating a Risk Management Culture

Posted on July 27, 2009 | 3 comments

Board MeetingHow do you create a culture of risk management in your nonprofit?  And what is a culture of risk management?

The Nonprofit Risk Management Center had a really nice piece last week about the culture of risk management in nonprofits, and how to establish it. From their article:

When nonprofit leaders reach out to the Center for advice on weaving risk management into the fabric of their organizations they often assume that what’s missing is a long list of policies. While adding new or updating existing policies may be in order, a bigger-picture issue almost always requires more immediate focus. That issue is the culture of the nonprofit, which may be either receptive or hostile to risk management. And, while culture change is a long term effort, starting as soon as possible will lend credence to everything else that follows.

As the article states, risk management isn’t just a list of policies or your insurance policies (that is risk financing, a part of risk management). But it is the tone that is set by board and management. The nonprofit’s ethics also come into play here. If the CEO walks out of the office with a ream of paper under their arm, what does this tell the staff? If the Executive Director says to the staff, “We can’t let the Board know anything is wrong!” what message are they communicating?

To me, and as the above article illustrates, a culture of risk management is one of always asking questions about our organizations.  Typical risk management questions like, “What’s the worst that could happen?” to perhaps less typical questions such as:

  • What would would happen to our event twice the amount of people showed up as we expected?
  • How do we reward staff?  Are we doing enough?
  • Is there a better way to present out financials that will make them easier to understand?
  • Are we being honest in our communications with our stakeholders?

A nonprofit organization faces risk every day just by opening its doors.  If a nonprofit serves a vulnerable population such as children or the elderly they can face even greater risks. But clearly we are not letting that stand in the way of doing needed work.  Managing the risks nonprofits face is critical to the success of meeting our goals and missions. The more we can make risk management a part of our daily processes, of creating that culture of risk management, the better our organizations will be.

Do you have any other ideas of questions we should be asking ourselves? Post them in the comments below. If you would like to immerse yourself in nonprofit risk management issues in a lively, intelligent and entertaining way please check out the Risk Management Center’s 2009 Risk Management and Finance Summit for Nonprofits.

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Posted in Policies and Procedures, Risk Management

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