e-fax – Electronic facsimile services are really inexpensive

I changed my e-fax provider today.

If you hadn’t thought about it before, or were unaware, you can buy an electronic fax service that puts faxes into your inbox via email.  You can dump your fax machine.

Each time I change providers, I find out that the services have gone up and the cost has gone down.

This time around I learned it is a common feature to be able to send a fax from your email software. Just enter the recipient’s fax number plus an extension as if it were an email address, add attachments, and hit send.  Your fax is on its way.  Cool.  Oh, toll-free numbers are now available for no extra charge.

Price?

More info on NPOs from speech by the IRS’ Director of Exempt Organizations

Over the weekend I wrote a post saying that active and informed board members are the cause of the correlation between good governance and compliance with tax laws.

More info is available on the speech by Ms. Lois Lerner, Director of Exempt Organizations at the IRS.  She is the senior executive in the IRS that deals with NPOs, so her voice is one that we ought to listen to.  She spoke at the Georgetown Law Annual Conference.

So if you have your board read your 990, you will be a better run NPO. Right?

That is perhaps the conclusion you could reach from reading a new study from the IRS.

Holly Hall, of The Chronicle of Philanthropy, reports on a speech by Lois Lerner of the IRS in a post, Good Governance Makes tax Compliance More Likely, Says IRS Study.

The IRS looked governance issues in 1,300 charities after the IRS had involvement with those organizations for other reasons. They found a very strong correlation between organizations that had good governance and high levels of compliance with the tax law.

Key findings:

There is more to the IRS audit report on Food for the Hungry than is yet visible

CharityWatch has an article discussing the IRS audit report on Food for the Hungry – - View Through the Looking Glass.

One sentence background – the IRS claims that Food for the Hungry substantially overstated the valuation of donated medicine in their 2008 tax return.

I’ve mentioned the report here and here.  I’ve been talking about the valuation of deworming meds, especially mebendazole, for several months.

The CharityWatch discussion provides a bit more information from the report that has been discussed publicly. It looks to me like there is more to be revealed.

Welcome to readers outside the U.S.

While writing a post on my other blog, Outrun Change, about how much personal computers have changed in the last 30 years, I realized how many of the readers of my blogs are from outside the U.S.

On my two main blogs, this one which is Nonprofit Update and Attestation Update, about 20% of the page views in the last 30 days have been from readers in other countries.

Welcome!

Not sure what that means for my writing, but I’ll keep that in mind.

Enjoy!

Cash flow classification for donated securities that are liquidated upon receipt

A nice clarification from the EITF…

One of the fuzzy places in the accounting literature for nonprofits is how to handle donated securities that are liquidated when they are received.

Here is the approach that most organizations take – Since they are not in the business of the investing in the stock market they transfer donated securities to their broker and liquidate them in an orderly manner.

How should those be presented on the cash flow statement? There’s divergence in practice, but I think the most common way is to reflect the liquidation has an investing inflow.

Exposure draft from the FASB will make the presentation consistent.

A short explanation of why feel good aid might make things worse

In The Broken “Buy-One, Give-One” Model: 3 Ways to Save Toms Shoes author Cheryl Davenport provides a concise description of the underlying problem with the TOMS model.

There’s a huge number of articles out there describing the conceptual issues.  Ms. Davenport has a great recap:

First, the Toms buy-one-give-one model does not actually solve a social problem. Rather, the charitable act of donating a free pair of shoes serves as little more than a short-term fix in a system in need of long-term, multi-faceted economic development, health, sanitation, and education solutions.

Moving up the value chain – data, information, knowledge, wisdom

What’s the difference between data, information, knowledge, and wisdom?

John Bredehoft pointed me to an academic definition from Sujatha Das, in her post Difference between Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom.

Value increases dramatically with each step up. Knowledge is far more valuable that just information. Wisdom far surpasses knowledge in value.

The price of free apps is not zero

You may not hand over money for that cool app, but you might pay in other ways.

Like handing over personal information.  Or perhaps the personal information of your friends.

An article in the Wall Street Journal, Selling You on Facebook, reports on their research into the data obtained by a variety of Facebook apps. Many apps look for personal information, sometimes including your political or religious beliefs.

Three skills for living in a social media world

There will be three career fields in huge demand in the social media world. That is the idea Mark Schaefer presents in his blog, {grow}.

I discuss this in my post Three Skills for Living in a Social Media World at my other blog, Outrun Change.

At an individual level, I think these three careers point to skills each of us need to develop if we wish to function in a world dominated by social media.  The career fields and individual skills are:

Lots of things in life are really, really complicated. Sort of like a rain forest.

Some things are exquisitely complicated.  Making changes, fixing problems, or making improvements to such things is really difficult.

Unintended consequences result when you do something simple in a complex system.

Came across a superb illustration of the challenge of dealing with complexity. In his post The Health Care Disaster and the Miseries of Blue, Walter Russell Mead compares the US healthcare system to a jungle ecosystem.

Words as a creative visualization? Part 2

Previous post introduced the idea that software could take raw data and convert it to a usable news article.  My friend John Bredehoft introduced the idea to me.

I think it is a great way for creative visualization of raw data.  Good way to help us understand a mass of numbers.

What does an auto-written article look like? 

Here are a few examples I found.  They are all on the Forbes website, where Narrative Science is credited as the author.

This is what progress look like – 1 electronic gadget in 2010 does the work of 14 electronic gadgets in 1980

Check out these two pictures showing 1980 and 2010 electronics tools:  Worth a thousand words.

One tool in 2010 does the work of 14 (by my count) in 1980.  Can you begin to guess the cost reduction, even without discounting for inflation?  How about the weight reduction or portability increase?

From Café Hayek, of course. This is the type of thing I talk about at my other blog, Outrun Change.

Words as a creative visualization? Part 1

I enjoy watching for creative ways to explain things.

I’ve discussed rap videos to explain economics, the federal budget illustrated on a one-page chart, and using one map to show the destruction of Napoleon’s army during his invasion of Russia. That one map does a better job of telling the story that a 1,000 word article and far faster than a 100 page book.

I have tried my hand at creative visualizations by producing two animated cartoons.  They tell the story of setting up good internal controls in a local church. Part one has received over 900 views on YouTube. Part two is here.

Here’s a big brain stretch for you – using a computer program to turn raw data into a story – creative visualization using words

Board training

This week I gave a presentation at Heartbeat International. The topic – helping board members of a nonprofit understand their responsibilities.

The course was well received by the board members in attendance.

I’ve long been concerned about helping time-stretched board members learn and grow in their responsibilities so they can be more effective.

This presentation was part of my efforts to help the NPO community.

I plan to take the presentation and expanded it to a large number of blog posts. Then I will weave them together into an e-book.

Many posts will arrive on this site. Check back often.