Funding Rights And Accurate Program Costs And Bears. Oh My!

Adaptistration People 017

Joe Patti recently published a terrific pair of articles from his Info you Can Use series that are well worth your time. Know Your Funding Rights examines a nonprofit’s right to apply overhead expenses to program costs for grant applications and his follow-up post, Figuring Out True Program Cost, is geared toward helping groups get back into the habit of generating accurate expense reports for grant applications (hint: the key word …

Read more

Peninsula Symphony Embezzlement Case Just Became Creepy

Adaptistration People 132

In March, 2014 Peninsula Symphony Orchestra’s former executive director, Stephen Jay Carlton, was arrested on charges of grand theft, embezzlement, forgery, ID theft and tax fraud, plus enhancements for excessive taking. A recent article by Tracey Kaplan in the 12/5/2014 edition of the Mercury News reports Carlton was recently convicted on all charges and prosecutors are asking for a 16 year sentence, which might seem extreme for embezzling $272,000; that is, …

Read more

The Met Is Getting A Second Opinion

ADAPTISTRATION-GUY-093

A coloratura goes to a psychiatrist complaining about mental stress from a string of bad reviews. The doctor says, “You’re crazy.” The coloratura says, “I want a second opinion” so the doctor tells her “Okay, you really should have been a lyric soprano!” Speaking of second opinions, the Metropolitan Opera’s (Met) mediation has produced an interesting byproduct in the form of a mutually agreed upon independent examination of the organization’s financial …

Read more

Is Open Data Coming To Orchestra 990s?

ADAPTISTRATION-GUY-046a

The 6/16/2014 edition of Chronicle of Philanthropy published an article by Susanne Perry (h/t @RCiprotti) that reports a lawsuit designed to require the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to make nonprofit tax returns (Form 990) available via open data standards; meaning, the IRs would have to provide the data in a database friendly, searchable standard rather than the current system of converting to PDF. Regular readers already know that open data standards …

Read more

It’s The Home Stretch

ADAPTISTRATION-GUY-099

Today is the final day to become an Orchestra 990 Database Project’s Kickstarter campaign backer. The ability to make a pledge shuts down at 11:59 PM CDT and over the past few days, a few frequently asked questions have been coming in via email and social media so it makes sense to take a moment and cover them here during the final day of giving. Any eleventh hour questions can be sent in …

Read more