Utilizing Internships - Topic for March 23, 2010

Are you a Finance Department of 1 wishing for additional staff to assist with the seemingly never-ending responsibilities of nfp finance? Or are you part of a Finance Department staff that still has trouble meeting deadlines because of excessive workload? If either of those scenarios look familiar to you, then make plans to join us Tuesday, March 23, 2010 when Allison Roba, Internship Program Coordinator at the John Cook School of Business will present information about internships and how nfp's can successfully attract skilled interns and run ongoing finance internship programs.
Some key areas Allison will cover are:

• What students are looking for in an internship
• Student capability levels 
• Availability of graduate students for internship
• Availability of undergraduate students for internship
• What is expected of the on-site supervisor
• How nfp's can compete with paid internships
• Other ways to recruit interns
• Benefits and drawbacks of hiring interns

Attendees also will receive tools and materials to help you kickstart your internship programs.

Promises, Pledges, and Receivables - It's all in the Intention

On Tuesday, February, 23, 2010, Donna Wallace of Kerber, Eck, & Braeckel presented the latest GAAP and best practices for Promises, Pledges and Receivables. The first bit of information we learned was that "promises" is the accounting term for what fundraisers call "pledges." The second piece of information we learned was that all donor contributions begin with "intentions." As you can see from reading the bullet points below, this topic is a bit complex and one we will probably re-visit in the future.

Here are some basic key points:

 

• If the donor expresses a plan or hope for future giving, but does not provide further detail, then their communication is an intent to give, and is not booked as a receivable.
• If the donor expresses a clear commitment to donate, either in writing or orally, then their communication can be interpreted as a promise to give and booked as a receivable.
• If the promise to give is based on the performance of a goal, then that promise is a conditional promise to give (not the same as a restriction) and will either be recorded as a receivable and restricted contribution at the time the promise was made, or recorded when the conditions were met, depending upon how likely the conditions will be met.
• If the receipt of the promise depends only on the passage of time or a demand for performance, then the promise may be recorded as a receivable in the period in which it was made.