Questions about budgeting, audits, fund accounting, financial policies, annual reports and accountability to donors and the public.
What should be included in a CSO’s annual report?
We've never done a formal annual report. We send grant reports to our donors and we post on social media but we've never pulled everything together into one document. A board member recently suggested we should start doing one and I agree in principle but I don't know where to start. What should actually go […]
Do we have to publish our financial information to the public?
Someone on our board raised the question of whether we're legally required to make our finances public. We currently share financial reports with our donors but we've never published them anywhere publicly. A local journalist once asked to see our accounts and we genuinely weren't sure whether we had to share them. What does the […]
Are CSOs in T&T required to have an annual external audit?
We're trying to figure out whether we legally need to get an external audit every year. We're fairly small — our annual income is around $300,000. Our previous auditor retired and finding a new one has been expensive and difficult. A colleague told me that small NPOs below a certain income threshold don't actually have […]
What is a Fund Accounting System and does our CSO need one?
We manage all our finances in a single Excel spreadsheet right now. We have about four different funders and each one gave us money for specific activities — it's getting really messy trying to track which money has been spent on what. Someone mentioned we need a 'fund accounting system' but I'm not sure what […]
How should we record and report in-kind donations?
Our organisation gets quite a lot of non-cash support — free use of office space, printing done for free by a local business, professionals volunteering their time. We've never formally recorded any of it. A donor recently asked about our total resource base and I realised I had no way to include all this non-cash […]
How should we develop an annual budget aligned with our strategic goals?
Every year we basically take last year's budget and add a bit for inflation. Our ED puts it together and the board approves it. It kind of works but I feel like it's not strategic at all — we're just carrying forward the same things year after year without asking whether they actually serve our […]
What financial policies should every CSO in T&T have in place?
We have a financial policy from about 2015 that nobody really looks at anymore. I dug it out recently and it's very basic and definitely out of date — doesn't even mention electronic payments. I want to do a proper update but I'm not sure what a good financial policy for an organisation like ours […]