Charleston Association of Grant Professionals (CAGP) to Meet Tues., May 21

The Charleston Association of Grant Professionals (CAGP) will meet Tuesday, May 21 in the auditorium of the Charleston County Public Library, 68 Calhoun St. in Charleston, from 5:45 – 7:30 p.m.

The speaker will be Dr. Linda Karges-Bones and her topic is "Fall into Funding: A Review of Grant Writing Strategies."

Join us for a discussion and heads up on the upcoming training with this local expert who is the author of "The Educator's Guide to Grants for Schools and Non-Profits."  She will present a three-hour workshop early this Fall that includes the book and updated funding sources.

Attendees at Tuesday night’s meeting will have the opportunity to sign up for the workshop which will be held in September at Charleston Southern University. Only 50 spaces are available.

Please share this notice with others who might be interested.

Hope you can join US FOR TUESDAY’S MEETING!

Nonprofit Accountability Efforts Take A Leap Forward with Launch of New Nonprofit Audit Guide©

Washington, DC (PRWEB) May 15, 2013

A new, free online resource for staff and board members of charitable nonprofits, as well as the accountants that they work with, is being unveiled today by the National Council of Nonprofits (Council of Nonprofits).

The Nonprofit Audit Guide©, created with support from the First Nonprofit Foundation, is the first comprehensive, web-based resource for nonprofits that explains the complex requirements and process for a financial audit. The Guide includes: 

•     A 50-state guide to nonprofit audit requirements;

•     A step-by-step approach for managing an audit; and

•     Answers to frequently asked questions on audit requirements.

“We created this one-stop-shop to cut through the confusion and provide practical tools in an important area for nonprofit financial accountability and transparency,” said Tim Delaney, President and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits. “Equipping nonprofit staff, board members, consultants, and CPAs with this guide will help ensure a smooth process that allows staff to comply with important regulations with as little interruption as possible to their day-to-day work of serving their communities.”

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Some nonprofits concerned that IRS scandal will stain their good work

           By Jill Warren Lucas
         Philanthropy Journal

State and national 501(c)(3) charities are expressing concern at being unfairly implicated by the growing scandal over the way the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) Exempt Organizations Division has handled applications submitted by certain 501(c)(4) social welfare entities.

A report issued Tuesday night by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) was tellingly titled Inappropriate Criteria Were Used to Identify Tax-Exempt Applications for Review. TIGTA conducted the audit based on allegations that the IRS process "1) targeted specific groups applying for tax-exempt status, 2) delayed processing of targeted groups' applications, and 3) requested unnecessary information from targeted groups."

Findings confirmed that the IRS used "inappropriate criteria that identified Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions instead of indications of potential political campaign intervention." The audit also cited ineffective management, which allowed the practice to continue for more than 18 months; substantial delays in processing certain applications; and allowing unnecessary information requests to be issued.

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IRS Takes Step to Make Charity Data More Accessible

By Sarah Frostenson

Chronicle of Philanthropy

The Internal Revenue Service took a major step this week toward making financial data about the nonprofit world more broadly accessible to the public.

The tax agency has come under pressure in recent years by open-government advocates who wanted the information available in a format that is easy to put in a spreadsheet and analyze. Until now, the IRS has released this kind of data only to a few research groups; everybody else could obtain only a set of DVDs that allowed readers to look one by one at each charity’s informational tax return, but made large-scale analysis tough to do.

The data released by the IRS doesn’t include everything on the informational returns filed by charities and foundations. Mostly it includes figures on sources of financial support, total assets and revenue, spending on overhead and programs, and compensation paid to a group’s top-paid officials. It also lacks the names and locations of the organizations, instead just offering a federal employee identification number for each group’s form.

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Transmedia -- Making Change Across Mediums

by Daniel Alpert,
Executive Director, Kindling Group,
Executive Producer, See3 Communications
Guest Columnist,
Beth's Blog

I became a documentary filmmaker to tell meaningful stories that explore social issues and inspire change. When I started out, the “broadcast, festival, and screenings” model of distribution dictated community engagement strategies that were more linear, and limited. We knew that if our film was compelling, we could break through to the people in the audience — and maybe they would help get the word out about the film and the issues it explored.

Today, it’s a whole new ballgame. The digital tools we have at our disposal are limitless — allowing great stories to reach more and more people, and providing new opportunities for recruiting advocates, changing policy, public education, and creating real change on the ground. Knowing your audience remains essential, because each platform is a new arena for expression, and a new avenue to engage different targets and users. But simply put, cross-platform campaigns are the future of documentary film, and issue advocacy.

My latest project is called @home, which explores homelessness in America through the story of Mark Horvath (aka @hardlynormal on Twitter). Mark is an e-activist who interviews homeless men and women, and shares their stories across every digital medium he can find — YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Google +, you name it. Just like Mark, @home is moving beyond the old models of documentary film, using social media, web video, and a smartphone “game for change” to to spark a conversation about homelessness, and how we can solve it.

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A Creature of Its Environment: View from a Community Foundation

By Alicia Philipp
Nonprofit Quarterly

The truth about community foundations is that if you know one, you know one. It’s no secret that all community foundations are quite distinct. But what we share is that we are all place-based funders. Our knowledge and expertise are built in a core geographic area. Certainly, we can and do give grants beyond our local communities. But the intensity of our focus is on our chosen geography. We give where we live.

Community foundations are similar in their building blocks: donors, nonprofits, and our positions in the community that enables us to convene individuals and institutions across all lines—cultural, geographical, ideological, issue, industry, etc. How community foundations assemble and arrange these blocks depends greatly on the ever-changing capacity and assets of their communities. And that is where you begin to see how diverse community foundations are in shape, size, and structure. Just look at The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta. After 36 years here, I have seen it evolve.

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Today's Entrepreneur: Nadav Wilf No.1 mistake: Quitting right when things look impossible

 Kristin Karaoglu

VatorNews

Today's Entrepreneur is Nadav Wilf, CEO of Enlightened.org. According to his VEQ Nadav is a thought leader and is good at team motivation and marketing management.

Enlightened.org integrates philanthropy into your everyday life. Enlightened empowers people to shop 1,000's of their favorite stores and brands like Nordstrom, Bloomingdales, Tory Burch and Diesel earn up to 10%  to donate to philanthropies of their choice.

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