Questions about budgeting, auditing, fund accounting, financial policies, and donor accountability.
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 I dug it out recently and it's very basic and definitely out of date — doesn't even mention electronic payments.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 […]