Question - Do nonprofit accounting standards serve to clarify a nonprofit’s financial condition, or rather to obscure it?

A man walks into a cigar bar in Chicago and buys three cigars. He then goes to a chair in the corner, lights all three and puffs on one, then the next, then the next and so on. Finally the manager gets curious and asks him why he is smoking like this. The man replies that he has two brothers and that one had moved to Europe and another to Australia to pursue careers. One of their favorite past times had been smoking cigars so before they left all three agreed to smoke like this from time to time so it was like they were all together again. The manager thought this was a neat idea and continued on with his duties.

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The winds of change blow steadily through the world of social services. Our colleagues in Child and Family Services recently shared with us the dramatic changes that are occurring in foster care and adoption. Attitudes toward adoption, secrecy, parental rights, and post adoption best practices are evolving rapidly, with the mind set of both the parents seeking to adopt and birth mothers who find themselves in need of surrogate parents for their child, changing dramatically.

In today’s world with the ever-changing technical offerings and social media giving us on the spot news sharing, it’s easy to stay continually distracted in both our personal and professional lives.

As an adopted person who was separated from my twin brother at one year of age, I especially have a strong commitment to this trend. Although, I could not have landed in a better household with very loving parents the entire process was certainly less structured than today’s process.

NPQ recently reported that when the board of directors of Sweet Briar College decided it was time to throw in the towel the alumnae, students, and faculty staged an uprising. The board did not factor in the fidelity and energy of the dedicated alumnae who were now mature, accomplished, and professional women. The proud graduates of Sweet Briar, an educational nonprofit, utilized social media to mobilize stakeholders and essentially establish a new governance system…then used the courts to take over the board.

As a leader in your organization it is critical that you know that your vendors can hurt you more than your customers. It’s a fact that although you can somewhat control how your clients impact your operations it’s not possible to control your vendors if they are successful with their other customers. If you end up with a good vendor it’s imperative that you demonstrate trust in them and show appreciation when they go the extra mile.

Many mornings we drive to work with the motivation and ambition to meet deadlines, but inevitably something crops up. There may be a staff absence and extra cases to cover, or too many urgent duty visits required (thereby saturating an already over- stretched team), or something unforeseen has happened on one of your own cases.