White Papers: Nonprofits and Charities

A Nonprofit’s Guide to Choosing an Accounting System

This guide will aid you in the evaluation of your organization’s accounting needs and the selection of a software system that best meets them. Learn the differences between a true fund accounting system and a commercial accounting system.

Fund Accounting vs. Commercial Accounting for Nonprofits

Why growing nonprofits need true fund accounting for secure financial management. Understand what a true fund accounting system can do for reporting and accountability.

Guide to Choosing a Fundraising System

This guide can assist organizations of all sizes and types by providing a framework to evaluate and choose a donor management system that best meets their organization’s specific needs. The right constituent relationship management software ultimately pays off in two simple ways: decreasing program costs and increasing contributions.

Nonprofit Focus: Understanding Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Understanding long-term and hidden costs in software deals

This paper provides guidelines to boards of directors and software purchase decision makers on what to expect to pay for a new software system at initial purchase and more importantly, over time.

Cause and Effect Philanthropy Supplement
published by Globe and Mail Newspaper, November 12, 2007

November 12, 2007: On Thursday, November 15, donors and charities alike will celebrate National Philanthropy Day, recognizing the extraordinary achievements philanthropy makes in our lives. For those who actively support charities and others who are contemplating the creation of their own lasting legacy, it’s also an opportunity to explore the options, tax advantages and powerful results that come from planned giving – the charitable bequeathing of personal assets through wills and estate plans.

Fundraising Software: Buy or Build?

Considerations with selecting an optimal information management system for your organization involves much more than a cost analysis.

Trends in Nonprofit Accountability and Its Impact on Reporting Requirements

Increased Stewardship and Accountability Requirements Raises the Importance of Integrated, Accurate, and Easy-to-Use Reporting Tools.

Sarbanes-Oxley influence changes in new laws expanding Nonprofit reporting requirements.

Nonprofit Software: Have You Been Oversold
Avoiding a One-Size Fits All Approach?

How to determine if your accounting software is the best fit for your organization.

Request for Proposal Writers’ Guide for Fund Accounting Software

This guide is intended to help in the preparation of the Request for Proposal by suggesting content sections, detailing the purpose of each section and providing templates for use in writing requests. It can help an organization determine its needs and quickly obtain answers about software systems and suppliers. The proposal responses will contain valuable details that will help narrow the selection pool to suitable new systems for further investigation.

GST and HST Information for Charities
Canada Revenue Agency, 2006

This guide explains how the goods and services tax/harmonized sales tax (GST/HST) applies to a registered charity or a registered Canadian amateur athletic association. As a result of increased small supplier limits, many charities do not have to register for GST/HST. (See page 12) Does not apply to you if you are a public institution (i.e., a registered charity for income tax purposes that is a school authority, public college, university, hospital authority, or a local authority determined to be a municipality. See Canada Revenue Guide RC4022)

Report to Congress and the Nonprofit Sector on Governance, Transparency, and Accountability (USA based)
Final Report to US Congress and Nonprofit Sector - Convened by Independent Sector, June 2005

The Panel on the Nonprofit Sector offers a comprehensive approach to improving transparency and governance, by providing recommendations that maintain the crucial balance between legitimate oversight and protecting the independence that charitable organizations need to remain innovative and effective.

Successful Technology Use in Small Grassroots Nonprofits
Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management, California Nonprofit Studies, July 2007
More information about the Institute is available at http://www.usfca.edu/inom.

This research examines how small nonprofits use technology and what it means for a nonprofit to use technology successfully. Factors are discussed that help and hinder nonprofits’ ability to incorporate technology as a basic part of their operations.

Understanding Management and General Expenses in Nonprofits
Presented at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action New Orleans, LA

There has been growing coverage by the press and the accounting profession about how nonprofits report their management and general costs. There has also been growing attention by some donors, perhaps made most famously by claims by some donors that nothing should go to administration. This paper is a first step to understanding and explaining what management and general costs look like in the nonprofit sector and whether or not various institutional characteristics such as mission, size, age, sources of revenues, and/or accounting practices can help explain some of the variation in management and general expenses.

Assigning Economic Value To Volunteer Activity: Eight Tools for Efficient Program Management
Canadian Centre for Philanthropy, 2002

Many organizations benefit substantially from the unpaid activity of volunteers. Managers of volunteer resources are, however, often uncertain about the extent or economic value of these contributions. This resource manual was created as part of the International Year of Volunteers Research Program to provide Canadian voluntary organizations with a systematic method for assigning an economic value to the activity of volunteers. It introduces eight key measures.

The Canadian Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector in Comparative Perspective
Imagine Canada, 2005 (A Johns Hopkins Project)

The aim of this report is to close the gaps in basic knowledge about the nonprofit or civil society sector, and to shed some light on the reasons for the significant disparities that exist in size, composition, financing and the role of the sector in various countries and regions.