Development

As our organizations grow, the number of donations and the number of financial transactions grow along with it. On top of that, the accounting function, if it hasn’t already, likely will move from cash basis to the more complex accrual basis. This growth leads to the need for specialization among staff and often a separation of the gift processing and bookkeeping functions. It is very appropriate and desirable for internal control purposes to have separate people handling the bookkeeping aspects of a donation from the donor stewardship aspects. And yet, this bifurcation … Read more

Disappointingly to the broader nonprofit community, including many arts organizations, Amazon announced on January 18 that effective February 20, 2023, it is closing its AmazonSmile program. Established in 2013, the program had allowed Amazon users to designate a charity to receive 0.5% of the cost of their purchases. It had been a case study in establishing a “set it and forget it” ancillary revenue stream for charitable organizations. Supporters had only to pick their chosen charity and then bookmark the AmazonSmile landing page and without any further effort needed, the charity would … Read more