Nonprofit Revenue Recognition Part 2 of 2

By CarolCarrie / December 7, 2020 /
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Welcome to the second installment of our two-part series on nonprofit revenue recognition. In the first post of this two-part series we: Covered the history and background for the new revenue recognition standards; Explained how to distinguish between contributions and exchange transactions (important for today’s blog post); and Gave an overview of conditional contributions and…

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What Are Restricted Grants?

By CarolCarrie / February 3, 2020 /
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You are probably thinking, “It’s about time you wrote a post on restricted grants!” We weren’t ignoring you. Really. Restricted grants are a huge, complicated area. So huge and complicated, in fact, we decided we needed to create a course to cover this topic. Everything from understanding the many different types of grants to learning…

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Bad Debt

By CarolCarrie / September 23, 2019 /
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In our last two ports of call on our Chart of Accounts Grand Tour, we visited Accounts and Pledges Receivable and also looked at Accounts Receivable Aging and Due Dates. Today we visit a related topic, bad debt, and take a look at the bad debts entry you need to make in your books. We find…

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Nonprofit Income Accounts Part 3: In-Kind Donations

By CarolCarrie / September 24, 2018 /
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In the last few posts we have been talking about contribution income and the kinds of income accounts you need. Our Chart of Accounts Grand Tour travels through in-kind donation income accounts today. In-kind donations are one of the more confusing and difficult areas for nonprofits. And that’s unfortunate because in-kind donations are so common.…

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Contributions Under the New Tax Law

By CarolCarrie / September 17, 2018 /
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How will the new tax law affect charitable giving? Are there any tax breaks left for donors? Our friends and income tax experts, Lou Lauteria and Greg King at Lauteria & King, PLC, sent out a client alert to explain. We reprint their explanation below, which includes a great idea for your donors, then add…

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Nonprofit Income Accounts Part 2: Contributions

By CarolCarrie / September 10, 2018 /
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In our last post we took a brief look at the nature of contributions, and all the many names that contributions go by. We distinguished contributions from exchange income. Today we look at accounts for contributions of cash. In-kind contributions, such as gifts of securities or other in-kind goods, services or rents, are for another…

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Names for Contributions

By CarolCarrie / August 27, 2018 /
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A gift by any other name would smell as sweet… Last week our Chart of Accounts Grand Tour began to explore income accounts. We covered federated campaigns and membership contributions. Before we continue with income accounts for general contributions, let’s talk terminology. Defining a Contribution Contribution income goes by many names: Donation Contribution Membership Gift…

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A Problem with Restricted Gifts

By CarolCarrie / April 30, 2018 /
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Recently a client asked us for help keeping track of restricted gifts. This organization has a program where they raise money for other charitable organizations in the community. The client said people are making contributions restricted for specific organizations and even for specific purposes. For example, they received a gift from one donor for a…

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Year End Gift Cutoff

By CarolCarrie / December 11, 2017 /
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December is a busy month for most nonprofits. Various sources place the percentage of annual gifts made in December at more or less 30%. But which gifts count for December? Regardless of your organization’s fiscal year, all organizations must deal with the year end gift cutoff of December 31 for tax purposes. The IRS requires…

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How to Value and Record Volunteer Services

By CarolCarrie / September 4, 2017 /
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We often receive the question, “How do I record volunteer services?” From our last post, Why Record Volunteer Services?, you know some volunteer services must be recorded as defined in Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Other volunteer services, while valuable to the organization, do not meet GAAP criteria for recording. However, you still may wish…

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