HR

Nonprofit News Update

Aug 20th, 2009

roundup This weeks update features a great piece on using Social Capital, more human resource topics that didn’t make it in to the last post and the latest from the Internal Revenue Service that might affect your organization.

The Power of Social Capital

The Fieldstone Alliance has a great e-newsletter and this topic caught me eye: Mapping Your Networks to Mine Valuable Resources. From the article:

After Exploring all possible options for reducing expenses and increasing revenues, many nonprofits are stymied—how can they survive this downturn? Every nonprofit has another valuable resource that they can tap—social capital. Positive, productive relationships represent social capital, which is just as important (well, almost as important) as money in the bank.

Social capital has been described as the resources available to people based on the networks their relationships give them access to. Just as a skilled plumber knows how the water is piped throughout the house, a skilled nonprofit or community leader knows how social capital flows through their networks or community.

Check out the article for more.

More on Nonprofits Human Resource Issues

Are you, or have you ever had to draft a severance agreement? This article talks about a new publication from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that may be of help, even though some are renaming the document, “How to Sue Your Employer.”

Exempt employees can present a challenge to employers, nonprofit or for-profit, especially when it comes to the issue of docking an employee’s pay. Make a mistake and you can violate their exempt status and open your self up to a world of financial and legal hurt. This article and this article offer some guidance that may be of help. You should also make sure there are not any separate, or even more stringent state rules that may apply to your organization as well.

IRS Updates and News

For those who have been waiting, efile.form990.org is ready to help you through filling out your 2008 form 990. They can also help you with several state filings as well, please do pay them a visit.

The final regulations for the 990-N, the electronic post card filing for small nonprofits have been released. No changes from the draft version, but it should be noted that organizations that are required to file the form and fail to do so for three consecutive years will automatically lose their tax-exempt status. Revocations will begin in May 2010.

The latest Form 990 filing tip is all about related organizations and schedule R. What is a related organization you ask? From the IRS:

Related organizations are organizations that stand in a parent/subsidiary relationship, brother/sister relationship, or supporting/supported organization relationship. Supporting and supported organizations are defined in section 509(a)(3) and 509(f)(3). Determination of the first two relationships depends on a definition of control set forth in the Form 990 instructions glossary and Schedule R instructions. The definition of control depends on whether the organization has owners or persons with beneficial interests.

Finally, the IRS wants us to make sure we handle donated property and non-cash contribution transactions the right way. Here is a page with several more links that might be of interest to any organization that receives non-cash contributions.

Human Resources for Nonprofits Update

Aug 10th, 2009

by Alan.

No comments yet

News Stand This 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.

IRS Info and Some Questions and Answers

Jun 25th, 2009

by Alan.

4 comments

IRS, Governance and the Form 990

I’ll lead off with some exiting news. Well, it’s exiting to me at least. Last week I learned that the Urban Institute’s efile.form.990 site should start being able to process the latest version of the form 990 by the end of July (not June). Their system allows you to electronically prepare and file your organization form 990, 990 EZ and extensions to file. There is a small fee, but I encourage anyone who prepares your organizations forms by hand to look into their system.

Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS Commissioner for Tax Exempt and Government Entities, made a presentation at Georgetown Law Center this week on nonprofit governance issues and what the IRS sees as its role relating to that.

While both state regulation and sector self-regulation are important, and I welcome and respect them, they do not get the IRS off the hook. Congress gave us a job to do, and we cannot delegate to others our obligation to enforce the conditions of federal tax exemption.

If you would like to read her remarks they are available as a PDF here.

Collaboration Resources

Need some tips on online collaboration tools? Gayle C. Thorsen at IMPACTMAX has a good rundown on some resources that should help you.

Questions and Answers: Revenue Recognition

Each year we have several matching gifts that come in after the fiscal year end of June 30. Should these receipts be counted toward the past fiscal year or the current year? For donor recognition purposes we count these gifts in the year they were pledged. For accounting purposes, how should we be dealing with this?

You should count them the same way you do for recognition. Nonprofit accounting rules for donations take into account the donors intent, and if the check was written in before the end of your fiscal year, or the pledge was made before then end of your fiscal year, it should be counted as that fiscal years money.

Questions and Answers: Employee or Independent Contractor?

I’m a bookkeeper trying to help a recently started, all volunteer nonprofit. The one concern I have is the administrative costs for the person who runs it. If the nonprofit were to reimburse that person for a missed day at work, would they be considered an employee of the nonprofit?

You can’t reimburse somebody for a missed day of work, that is not a “real” expense. That would be considered compensation. This could be a 1099 / independent contractor relationship OR an employee relationship. I would look carefully at the duties tests between the two and make your judgment. The IRS is pretty serious about making sure employers classify folks correctly. You can check out their resource pages here.

Question and Answers: Hiring Costs

We are a small nonprofit that had a change in our Executive Director. The costs to recruit, interview and move a new Executive Director to our state was extremely expensive. These costs are a one-time charge that are impacting our net assets. Is there a way that I can capitalize them to spread out the impact?

Not in this case. Capitalizing an expense is done for physical assets that have a long useful life so that the expense of the item is spread out over its time of use. Employees can’t get treated the same way.

Just make sure to clearly explain and footnote the situation on all of your reports and financials so people will not think there is something wrong with the organization and you should be OK.

Do you have a question? Click here to ask it

HR

More Questions and Answers

Question – Should the donor know?

Question – SAS 112 issues

Question – Remote Employees