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By Put Barber
It makes you crazy.
You work day after day in some good cause – there are many – along with good friends and colleagues who bring great creativity to the tasks, put in long hours, pass up higher-paying job opportunities, and take real satisfaction in making a difference in other people’s lives. You know for sure that this globe would be a much worse place to live today, and even more so in the future, if the work done by your organization and counterpart nonprofits around the world didn’t happen.
And what do you read in the papers? See on TV? Mostly, not a word about all that. Every now and again, a story about how some nonprofit is in financial difficulty. (Who knew?!? Can that really happen?!?). And then, once in a blue moon but all over the front pages, “Board President Denies Knowledge of Faked Travel Reports!”
We all know it’s true. Everyday good news about everyday good deeds is no news at all. Bad news may get a bit of notice. Terrible news is what people see. And remember … [Continue reading...]
Contributing Writer
Putnam Barber is a visionary social entrepreneur, a wise observer of nonprofits, and one of the most respected voices in the world of public benefit organizations.
His is a senior consultant to Executive Alliance, an association of nonprofit executive directors and supporters of the field. He is also the Chief Editor of the Nonprofit FAQ, which has been a widely cited encyclopedia of nonprofit knowledge since its inception in 1994. He is on the Editorial Board of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. He is a Visiting Professor in Seattle University’s Not for Profit Leadership program. In 1990, he was the founding Executive Director of The Evergreen State Society, a nonprofit association of Washington State.
He was a columnist for the Chronicle of Philanthropy and is the author of numerous influential articles on the sector. He was a Senior Advisor to Social Ecology, a past Director of the Washington State Office of Voluntary Action, and a past Executive Director of Cityclub.
By Putnam Barber
One of the very early posts to the newly created newsgroup US-NONPROFIT at the start of the 1990s was the query “Does anyone know how my nonprofit can get a free copy of the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance?” In those far-away days, this guide to federal grant programs was only available as a printed volume. Now, of course, it is searchable online. Meanwhile, online discussion of nonprofit questions continues in both email and UseNet form.
Several posts followed the initial query. There were despairing comments about the price charged by the General Services Administration for the book, and suggestions, such as “ask your Congresscritter”, for ways it might be obtained for free. Then Don Homuth weighed in with a post titled “TINSTAAFL.”
His comments started by observing that the price of the book was very low and could not come close to covering the government’s expenses in producing it. He went on to question … [Continue reading...]
By Putnam Barber
May 17, 2004, goes down as a milestone date in the obscure world of nonprofit accountability.
May 17, 2004, is the first-ever deadline for filing Form 990 with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) when filing could be done electronically, over the World Wide Web. It is the due date for exempt organizations whose fiscal year ended December 31, 2003. It is the 15th day of the fifth following month, plus a couple of days because May 15 fell on a Saturday this year. On February 23, 2004, in plenty of time for that deadline, the IRS had the procedures in place to receive these forms electronically.
Not only was electronic filing (e-filing) permitted, it was possible.
Thanks to the work of the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) at the Urban Institute the website at Form990.org offered a web based version of software to complete the form and every step of a process to prepare an electronic 990 and ship it off through cyberspace to the IRS. … [Continue reading...]
By Putnam Barber
When people who care about nonprofits get together and talk shop, they often spend time lamenting the disadvantages of working in a field defined by negations. And just as often, these conversations come to no very satisfying conclusion.
Nonprofit people are right to chafe at this unfortunate feature of American’s everyday speech. Unsophisticated board members worry about whether it is ok for a nonprofit organization to have a surplus of revenues over expenditures. They say they are concerned that such a “profit” might deny the organization nonprofit status. Commentators perpetuate Dickensian stereotypes when they are amazed and alarmed by the scale and complexity of important community institutions. Such writing reinforces the myth that nonprofit organizations should be hardy bands of volunteers ministering to society’s ills with one-on-one charity. More attention to being “profitable” is often suggested by pundits and entrepreneurial advocates as a cure for the financial weaknesses of community groups. Too often, the suggestion includes a tiresome implication that nonprofit status carries with it an unexamined resistance to sound management and making tough decisions.
One key source of this familiar pattern of speech is … [Continue reading...]
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