Discover the Transport Bill Format in Word for NPOs

Transport bill format in word for NPOs

there are lots of reasons why your non-profit's annual irs form 990 is critically important chief among those reasons you're legally required to file one each year but another important consideration is the public transparency form 990 provides your non-profit [Music] i'm greg mcrae founder and ceo of foundation group and welcome to our 501c3 university channel today we're going to be exploring the idea of how your form 990 aids in your efforts to maintain transparency now operating a non-profit is a lot like living in a house with floor-to-ceiling windows but with no curtains virtually everything you do is visible to the public or at least it's supposed to be it's the grand bargain if you will that comes with the privilege of being a tax-exempt 501c3 now obviously you're not likely going to be operating your programs in a fully glass building so practically speaking how is this transparency achieved there's a number of ways but the most critical is your annual irs form 990. whether you are filing form 990 990ez or 990 pf each of these information returns are divided into sections and each section reports specific things about your nonprofit's most recently completed fiscal year these sections include the following it's a long list so here we go income and expenses by category asset and liability balances the names and titles of officers directors and key employees the compensation amounts of any of those officers directors and key employees detailed descriptions of the non-profits programs conducted during the past year including how many people were served and how much income and expenses were allocated to the activity information about last year's fundraisers including descriptions and detail by event along with the income and expenses of those events lots of yes or no explain type questions about your compliance with certain issues details regarding investment related activity grants given who did you give money to grants received who gave you money if you're a public charity a breakdown of your past five years of revenue by category and the resulting public support test calculation we recently covered the public support test in another video so we'll include a link in the description below if you're a private foundation a complex calculation of your asset base subject to annual distribution requirements and much much more like i said the irs is asking for a lot of detail on your form 990 in fact if your non-profit brings in 200 000 or more in gross revenue each year that means you file the full version of form 990 what we call the long form in addition to the core form you also potentially have sub schedules a through o to think about i've seen final returns exceed 50 pages for larger organizations so how is form 990 data made public i'm glad you asked in the past form 990 data was collected from the irs each year by the nonprofit organization called guidestar now one of guidestar's purposes is to make sure such data is readily available to the public so that anyone interested can see what a particular charity is up to with regard to both money and activities godstar doesn't rate nonprofits or otherwise make any subjective judgments based on the data it just simply reports it starting in 2016 the irs began making this data available on their own website irs.gov eo you can search there by the name or ein number of the charity and review the most recently filed returns in case you're wondering there is no opt out available as stated above if your organization is required to file form 990 990 ez or 990 pf your return will be made publicly available on both guidestar and the irs website but there are two notable exceptions one churches and two public charities that average less than fifty thousand dollars per year in gross revenue churches while being public 501 c threes they've always been exempt from filing form 990 as such you'll rarely find a church that files one now that doesn't mean that their financial activity is exempt from transparency however churches are required to provide financial reports upon request to those who ask and have standing to inquire as for the second category the ones bringing in less than fifty thousand dollars per year these nonprofits file the electronic form 990 ne postcard both guidestar and the irs will show that those returns have been filed but because there's no financial or other data provided there's really nothing else for a member of the public to see other than the fact that they were submitted with any rule there's always the exception right in this case that exception involves donor transparency a significant section of form 990 is called the schedule b it is here that the irs requires non-profits to list all donors who gave more than five thousand dollars last year the irs has always redacted that schedule from the rest of form 990 before making the information public the reason has always been about protecting the donor's privacy well in recent years a handful of states most notably california decided it would make such donor information public well as you can imagine the vast majority of nonprofits weren't very happy about this and a lawsuit was filed to keep the data private the lawsuit made it all the way to the supreme court in a case known as americans for prosperity versus bonta the high court ruled against california in july 2021 requiring it and other states to keep donor data private most non-profits are well aware of their requirements to file form 990 what many fail to appreciate however is the fact that they live in a proverbial glass house the public has full visibility into your living room metaphorically speaking of course so filing a timely and accurate return is critical if you need help preparing your form 990 filings let us know our compliance team would love to help you can find a link to our form 990 services page in the description below as always if you enjoyed this video please click the like button below hit the subscribe button if you haven't already and be sure and click the little bell icon to be notified when we post new content we've got stuff coming weekly thanks for watching and we'll see you next time [Music]