12.14.09 Nonprofits and Archiving Materials
www.ISBO.biz
Quote of the Month:
“Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.”
—Wernher von Braun, German rocket physicist (1912-1977)
Adrienne Grizzell, MPA, CAE, has a background in marketing and since 1999 has been in association management. She owns Management, Inc. She is very familiar with nonprofit organizations and suggests two sites for you to use as research tools before you donate to any nonprofit group.
http://www.GuideStar.org
http://www.CharityNavigator.org
At these sites you’ll be able to see any given organization’s 990 forms, what they pay their staff and what their expenses are. “Anything less than 25% for administrative costs is a good thing,” said Adrienne.
There is no legal/IRS difference between a “nonprofit” and “not-for-profit” organization. The preferred term these days is “nonprofit,” no hyphen. Adrienne has a plaque in her office that says, “Nonprofit is a tax status, not a business plan.” Hah.
Forming a legal nonprofit organization is fairly complex, involving paperwork at both state and federal levels. When the IRS says an organization qualifies as a 501(c)(3) then people can make tax-deductible charitable contributions. A 501(c)(6) entity can lobby on behalf of its constituents.
Many people, from time to time, belong to an organization’s board of directors. “People don’t innately know how to be board members,” said Adrienne. Even those who are very skilled in their own businesses really need to learn how to be a board member. Attend a seminar, talk to someone, do some research. Board members have a fiduciary responsibility to the organization. She has seen organizations get in trouble with the IRS because they didn’t have a travel reimbursement policy, for example. “People have good intentions but are often clueless,” she said. Make sure the organization has Directors and Officers (D&O) liability insurance.
When she works with nonprofit organizations, one of the things Adrienne does for them is organizational recordkeeping. She resisted off-site storage for a long time but has taken that step to keep their paper copies in a safe place. Last summer she went through the minutes of an 85-year-old organization and gave each board member a binder and flash drive with all the institutional memory.
One concern about document storage is ever-evolving technology, taking information from 5 ¼-inch floppies to 3.5-inch floppies to CDs to flash drives to cloud computing. “It’s a moving target,” said Adrienne. When she gets banker’s boxes from her clients, she scans the information for electronic storage, then saves hard copies.
How long do you keep things on file for clients? There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but having a policy is always a good thing. For example, tell clients you will keep their materials archived for three years. If you don’t hear from them in the meantime, then when the anniversary approaches you have a great opportunity to contact them again and who knows, you could get another piece of business. If it’s a regular client, a policy is still a good idea. One year, three, five, whatever it is, always let them know when the date is coming up and offer them the chance to come pick ‘it’ up.
If you keep samples of your own work, how many do you need and how long should you keep them? In the beginning, you’ll save everything. But as the years fly by, you may start running out of room. Take time to think. How often do prospective clients request samples of my work, how current is this piece, do I really need more than one, is this still a good representation of the work I do, can I just take a photo of this thing because it’s unwieldy and I’m not making more of them anyway—these types of questions.
As a self-employed businessperson for 10 years, Adrienne is all about recognizing opportunities when they arise. “We can’t discount good fortune,” she said. In 2002 she attended a conference in Florence (Italy, not Kentucky) and met someone in the Italian government who was interested in a charitable topic they were discussing. Soon an international committee was formed and Adrienne has been asked to speak each year; in December 2009 it was in Venice (Italy, not Florida).
“Right or wrong, when you’re self-employed you are in control of what you do,” she said.
We thank Adrienne for her presentation. Feel free to contact her with any questions.
Adrienne Grizzell
Management, Inc.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
RECOMMENDED READING:
Career Renegade
by Jonathan Fields
Creating Competitive Advantage
by Jaynie L. Smith
Customer Loyalty Concepts: The First Interactive Thought Book
by Jeffrey Gitomer
Escape from Cubicle Nation
by Pamela Slim
The Sassy Ladies Toolkit for Startup Businesses
by Michelle Girasol, Wendy Hanson, Miriam Perry
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
WEB SITES OF INTEREST:
The Wayback Machine
Find archives of billions of online pages dating to 1996
http://www.archive.org/web/web.php
IRS: how long should I keep records
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=98513,00.html
Overview of keeping household records
http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/money/keeprecords/keeprecords.htm
Video: March Pachter, the art of the interview
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/marc_pachter_the_art_of_the_interview.html
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Have a fabulous month!
KS
Kathie Stamps Contact me
ISBO.biz Web content and meetings
Charlotte Caldwell Contact me
ISBO.biz Web design and technology
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This is a recap of the December 2009 ISBO.biz luncheon in Lexington, KY.
We meet the second Monday of each month and would love to see you at a lunch meeting. Please e-mail us for more information.
If you notice any typos or broken links, please let us know.