85.7 F
San Fernando
Friday, Mar 29, 2024

CHARITY TO ALL

Nicole Douglas is a partner at Hinricher & Crasnick, a firm with 40 percent of its business focused on auditing and reviewing the finances of charitable and other nonprofit organizations. In addition to helping these groups and organizations professionally, Douglas and others at the firm volunteer personal time to demonstrate support for the groups. Douglas, for example, serves on the board of the Make A Wish Foundation. Question: How do nonprofits differ from other types of clients? Answer: The mission is for them to serve society and further the goal of what they have been set up for. They usually use different software programs that are complex. There are restricted donations you have to be aware of. They really have to make sure that is accounted for properly, or the Department of Justice can come in and penalize them and make them give donations back to the donor, or take away their tax-exempt status. Q: What role do you play in training nonprofits on accounting? A: We do a lot of nonprofit audits. We cannot do a lot of training for their staff because that would impair our independence. There are a lot of organizations out there that have courses and seminars. There are also college courses that can be taken. Once we audit them, we will give suggestions on things they need to improve. Q: Have you seen common strengths and weaknesses emerge from the audits? A: (Laughs). Yeah, and a lot of it is with the accounting. When you get to the smaller nonprofits — because they don’t have the resources for a good accounting staff or a good accounting program — you find they are not educated enough. They really need to know that’s important. In the last 18 months, 279,000 nonprofits had their tax-exempt status revoked because they are not filling out their information returns and the IRS will see there’s something on their return that doesn’t make sense. Q: How does serving on the Make A Wish Foundation board help in your job? A: It gives you a whole different perspective. The reason I am on the board (of Make A Wish) is I have nonprofit clients and experience with them. I review their audit and I review their tax return.

Featured Articles

Related Articles