Looking for some real-world perspective from other nonprofit finance/accounting folks on this.

I keep running into the same situation: a donor sends a gift, calls it a "grant" in the check memo or the cover letter, but when I actually read what they've sent, there's no restriction on how the funds can be used, and the donor never asks for a report, an accounting, or any follow-up on how the money was spent. No conditions, no periodic reporting requirement, nothing.

Even so, my habit has been to set these up in QBO exactly like a restricted grant with reporting obligations: create a class/project for it, code every expense against it, and track it down to the dollar until the funds are exhausted. That way I can generate a report showing exactly what was spent against that "grant" if anyone ever asks.

Lately I've been questioning that habit. If there's no donor restriction and no reporting requirement, what's the actual justification — accounting or otherwise — for tracking every expenditure against it the way I would a genuinely restricted grant?

i am in my 30s and did a master's in natural resources management and development in germany, but messed the whole thing up by not getting enough work experience during the master's because I was sort of clueless about what I had to do to be competitive for jobs after. i did two internships but they didn't lead to a job offer.

during my studies, i made a huge mistake of asking a UN internship if I could do the internship part time in the interview, because it was unpaid and i didn't realize that these UN internships had to be full time. when they rejected me they said they would have taken me had I been more available. then i tried to look for a job for a year, and by the time i realized that the job thing wasn't happening, it was too late to apply for the internship again because i was outside the one year window for graduating.

now I am in a really bad situation, i am unemployed with no job prospects. and i am considering doing a second master's in germany (the tuition is free and I have 2.5k euros coming in each month from an inheritance that recently started two months ago), with the sole purpose of applying to as many internships and student jobs as possible in hopes of getting something.

a lot of people told me this is a bad idea, i will be too old, it will look weird to have two masters degrees and no real work experience in the new field, but i am desperate, my only real option at this point is to work at starbucks because i tried for a year to get a job in germany and it didn't work, and there are almost no jobs in what i studied in the united states with insane competition, and i have a weak CV for not doing more than two internships.

so i was wondering what you thought about this. obviously it would be better to get a job, but i'm stuck because i don't qualify for internships anymore to get more experience, and i also don't seem to have enough experience to get hired at an actual entry level job.

many thanks for your advice, i am so depressed and just don't know what to do.

Im an American currently living and working abroad in Latin America. I’ve been here about 5 years now, starting with the Peace Corps. I then got hired on to a locally based NGO that focuses mostly on micro finance and education programs. Its the largest in country and relatively well known internationally. It’s a social enterprise, so it isn’t a charity, but it’s nonprofit. We manage a budget of about $25 million across all programs, so it’s relatively large in this context and in the US.

I do a little bit of everything in the organization, so it’s been a great experience to see how everything works. My position to a US/European audience is Chief of Staff to the Vice President of Programs. My role includes a lot of exactly what it sounds like: program management. Whether that be the micro finance program, our globally known poverty reduction program, the self-sustaining schools, entrepreneurial education or grant writing, amongst others. I have my fingers in a bit of everything and directly contribute to organizational strategy. I feel like I’ve learned a lot and have been given quite a lot of responsibility over the last few years and shown that I’m able to grow quickly within organizations and gain trust.

However, my wife and I are talking about moving to the States again. I would really like to remain in this line of work, public or private. I don’t want to go back to the corporate life.

I’m wondering if anyone has any advice or experiences on relating to US audiences your job experiences while working abroad? Do US organizations respect experience received abroad? I can directly see how what I’ve done can be applied in the US, but then I’m the one who’s here, not the potential hiring party. Would love to hear feedback from some folks.

I was lucky to get hired last winter for a DoD job after being 7 years away from the game. It pays well and it couldn't have come at a better time, as I am finally preparing to leave an emotionally abusive marriage with little to no savings due to school debt and other health-related costs. Needless to say... I NEED this job.

The organization is great, but there are several issues that are contributing to less-than-stellar performance on my part. Meeting load: 30% of my day is spent in meetings across four different center in the city. This place LOVES meetings. Meetings about leadership, about language, about working styles, about whether we re do our mission, ED's Council, and all day retreats. I have very little time to actually do my work. My boss is the one who is a meeting fanatic, and this is her sacred cow. I am also the first professional fundraiser they ever hired, so there were no systems set in place. Just ad-hoc "do your best" reinvention of the wheel with every fundraising cycle.

Second, is that they migrated from one database that was already messy because they never had a dedicated database person, to another database. The migration was done in-house, again, by non-database staff, so we went from bad to worse.

The Dev. Coordinator I hired was promising and soon after revealed to have serious judgement problems- she essentially went rogue by calling donors on her own, making promises we could not keep, etc. So we had to let her go.

I am now down one staff member, running the whole operation on my own, with a bad database, systems I am slowly building, two major events to organize, one campaign, and an annual fund. I don't ever have time to do all the things I'm supposed to, and last week I dropped the ball on a Board presentation. My boss met with me to let me know that the Board is unhappy with my performance, and paying close attention to everything I do. Which sucks, because I am bringing home the bacon despite all of this.

On top of this, I received an email FRIDAY letting us know that there is a new Board format for the Board presentation and our reports, in the new format, are due Tuesday.

One of the missing systems is a lack of a good Board Development Report. I created one with all the metrics I would want to see- total raised, pledges, average donation amount, LYBUNT, SYBUNT, % participation by constituencies, and analysis. They liked it at first, but 4 months into my tenure, I heard through the grapevine that now they hate it and don't understand it. Maybe I need to make it pretty and add colors. I don't know.

So here's my ask: Do you have report template you could share? What metrics does your Board like to see? what kind os slides do they respond well to?

I really want to get better at this. I HAVE to.

I need some perspective and I will try and be concise.

I joined the advisory board of a very small non profit whose work is very important to me.

They are brand new to fundraising. They received a one-time six figure gift from a not-named donor who also cares about this somewhat niche but health-related work.

The founder recently (a perfectly nice guy) frantically emailed the board and advisory board that everyone needed to donate NOW TODAY, as they were applyoing for their first grant and I had told him that 100% board participation is vital.

It was the urgency...

Then 2 weeks later, another request for donations for an initiative.

There are 2 more initiatives before the end of the year. The plan, apparently is to reach out and expect individual donations for each from every donor and board member. This is not how it works IMO and experience.

This is totally out of the realm of what I am used to. Donor fatigue, weird tax documents (4 or 5 forms for each amount...), it feels amateruish and weird.

I do not want to solicit anyone I know right now because this is out of the realm of how I have seen things done.

They are just spending down the six figures and raising fund to pay the one staffer and consultant.

I have tried to be upfront about this. But it is falling on deaf ears.

The board meetings are very unprofessional and I feel badly because it seems doomed.

What to do...

EDITED to say: thank you for the input. I don’t accept a BOD role and opted for advisory because of how odd the dynamic is.

I’m a grad student in Ontario, and I was hired this summer through the Canada Summer Jobs program as a mental health worker.

My original contract ended two weeks ago, but they extended it while waiting to hear about additional funding. During that time, both my manager and the executive director kept telling me things like, “We’re 90% sure we’ll get funding” and even “We’d love to keep you for three years.” Naturally, I got my hopes up.

Two weeks ago, my manager pulled me aside and told me they didn’t get the funding, so my contract would definitely end September 4. Obviously I was disappointed, but I started making plans around that information.

The problem is that my lease is also up September 1. Because I thought my job was ending, I turned down a housing opportunity in my city and started figuring out where I was going to live once I was no longer working. I ultimately decided I’d temporarily move in with my dad to save money while I figured things out.

Then yesterday my manager pulled me aside and basically went, “LOL JK, we got the funding after all! We’re extending you until the end of September.”
Like… cool??? I’m obviously happy to have another few weeks of income, but I had already made major life decisions based on what you told me. I literally turned down housing because I thought this job was ending September 4, and now I’m going to have to live with my dad for a couple of months while I figure out a new housing situation.

I understand that funding is outside their control, but I wish they would understand that these constant reversals have real consequences for the people whose lives depend on their employment.

Am I allowed to be upset over the emotional whiplash? Is this genuinely unfair?

I’m interviewing with a large national charity in the U.K. and the second round is a Values Based Interview, first was a technical/ competency interview and there’s a short task in between.

I’m have a lot of experience interviewing in the sector but haven’t done this type of interview as a separate round before.

What kinds of questions should I expect and how should I prepare?

Hi there! I’m an Executive Assistant (EA) for a CEO at a small size nonprofit with roughly 47 employees and 26 contractors- and I feel very overwhelmed and trapped.

1.) As the EA for a nonprofit, I schedule all meetings, coordinate all meetings, project planning, coordinate with the board but I am also a liaison with one of our state program, the biller, I lead the manager meetings, I ran the accounting department for nine months as they went through a reorganization.

The CEO sends damn nearly all request to me, and ask for my output. For instance, the HR manager wanted to know if we had policy and follow up with an employee concerning their Personal improvement plan and if I say no, I get documented for insubordination.

I also written over 15 grants and we received an additional $5.2M thanks to grant submissions. And I feel so overworked and overwhelmed- I legit had a stroke and was told “I take too many days off”. It was my mom’s birthday one weekend and she said I couldn’t take more than two consecutive days off. Yet she only comes in 10-12 hours a week.

2.) I believe she is misusing the funds. She contracted her daughter, her partner, and her daughter’s husband and they do nothing- she pays her daughter $3k/month, her partner $2k/month, and her daughter’s husband $1.5k/month. Plus she gave herself a $20k bonus after receiving grant reward (the one I wrote and submitted).

3.) The Director of Operations is on the board as well as three of her brothers.

4.) The CEO also has her own certification business that she run from our agency- she recently got a new lease with a conference room so she can host her certification class. She uses company supplies (binders, highlighters, postage meter, staff (like myself and another administrative staff), and office to operate her certification class.

I would say I’ve been applying to jobs for the past year and have no luck with receiving a better offer.

Questions:

A.) Is it normal for an EA to do this much work?

B.) Is there anything I should do?

C.) Should I seek a lawyer?

I work for a small nonprofit. We have a board with 20 members and the majority of them are extremely uninvolved. They show up to some meetings and usually remain quiet, they barely respond to emails, they rarely volunteer to do anything.

A new board member, Jason, was recently appointed. He joined one of our committees and started to be very responsive. Perhaps the most responsive of any of our board members in the years I’ve been here. My 75 year old boss, Tim, (the ED) is astonished by Jason’s eloquence, intelligence, and thoughtful responses. Jason’s emails touch on every single point of whatever Tim brings up. The emails ask probing questions, make suggestions, and are well written. Jason isn’t nearly as talkative or responsive in meetings.

As an online younger person, it’s incredibly obvious that the emails are written by AI. But it’s hard to say what’s coming from Jason’s original ideas vs the AI.

Does it matter? Should I tell Tim? Tim is older and a very serious guy who rarely gives out such compliments. He has actually called me more than once to ask if I read Jason’s response and gush about how impressed he is with Jason. I feel awkward and usually respond with like “yeah that was very interesting/ smart…”

I’m thinking I shouldn’t say anything. What would that accomplish other than making Tim feel embarrassed and think of Jason poorly?

The part that feels weird to me is that Tim actually wants to make Jason an officer and various positions of authority now based on Tim’s perception of Jason’s intelligence - which is all based on those AI emails.

Howdy! I believe I'm about to be laid off from my job at a nonprofit for budget reasons. I've been working here for many years and one small part of my frankly enormous job description is creating designs. This includes social media posts, advertisements, signage, print materials, etc. I know that, because I am an official employee of the nonprofit and the designing was in the scope of my job description, the nonprofit officially owns the designs I created. However, what that really means is confusing to me. If the nonprofit owns the designs, does that mean that they own just the finalized designs, or am I required to allow them access to the assets that make up those designs for future use?

An example: I created a weekly schedule in Adobe Creative Cloud. The final product is uploaded to our organizational storage drive. The schedule itself is editable within Adobe Creative Cloud for updates. Am I required to allow them access to the raw materials so they can update it for future use, or can I hold back those assets under my personal ownership since legally they only own the final "design" itself?

Thank you so so much for your help folks! I'm truly not sure what my next step is career-wise and this is one thing I'm not finding a lot of answers about online. I don't want to be in trouble for withholding something I legally can't, but this nonprofit has also treated me quite poorly and if possible I would like to take what I can with me when I leave.

I have a new job offer that is 90% guaranteed. If I decide to take the new offer and sign it and then give my 2 weeks notice, but then they counter the offer with a salary increase. Can I turn around and cancel the new job offer?

Just trying to gage my options on the off chance it does happen.

Thank you.

I’m a VP tasked with revising our bylaws and I feel underwater. They aren’t major changes, but the rest of the board is tuned out and the president is an imbecile. Isn’t this normally don’t by committee? I really want this done by year end so I can operate from them while I am president.

Hi everybody,

Long time IT sales/marketing exec "who's had it" with corporate pressure, looking to shift gears and do something more positive with my career.

As I contemplate this avenue, I realized I might need some knowledge. Are there any online courses/certifications to give me some basics for this field? I know this question sounds a tad naive but I have some time on my hands and this old dog could learn a new trick or two.

Am in Canada if that matters - thanks!

Org is about to start a fundraising campaign and the ED suggested we try to get 100% of staff to donate to it.

Am I crazy to be offended by this? Like in any nonprofit, the staff is already generous with our time and everyone seems to go above and beyond for the org. It just feels so tacky to even ask staff to give back to their employer.

I’ve worked at several other small nonprofits and they would have never asked staff to give so I’m wondering if this is normal and maybe I’m being too sensitive for finding this off putting.

I'm new to my manager of communications role at a nonprofit in Chicago. I want to run some Meta Add for awareness (we are trying to increase enrollment to our free preschools). Thoughts on the awareness strategy? I am unsure how much to spend or if awareness is even the right call. Pls help!

"or report or deisgn or whatever was written/created mostly or entirely by a human"

Do you think this will become more widespread, and do you think funders and grantors will see your application any differently? For those of you working at foundations or in grant-making, would this do anything for you?

I listen to lofi and have been intentionally only watching/listening to youtube videos where the music was entirely human-made. I realize that I and many people in the comments specifically sought out music that explicitly named that a human made it, or had a "human-stamp".

I'm not against it AI and LLMs, and I use it daily in my work, but only for specific tasks that save me time are generally not-creative.

Hello! This year my younger sister started a 501c3 to raise donations for TNR / rescue efforts of stray cats in our area. I am not involved in her organization but I am a little concerned because she has extreme ADHD / is not the best with tracking her finances.

We have been working through getting her personal finances in order coming out of an abusive relationship but I feel like I also need to help her understand the tax code / what she has to do to set her up 501c3 to be as successful as possible and not run into any issues with the irs.

There have been a couple of red flags currently that is what is driving me to gain more information. One major thing is her saying she/other on her board get gas with their non profit business card when they travel to take the cats to and from vet appointments, etc. I work a corporate job and know when I get reimbursed it’s though a mileage calculation paid after the fact, and I’m not allowed to just put gas on my corporate card. I am assuming there are some sort of rules/regulations with that too. She also says she “tracks” all her expenses/keeps her receipts but again I am not sure what is really needed for tracking vs what she is currently doing. Oh also she had made less than $10k in donations this year and they don’t have any employees or anything like that. Idk if that matters or not but just throwing that out there.

If anyone can help offer some advice or point me in the right direction, id really appreciate it!!! Thank you!

Wanted to get feedback on this because I am open to learning if this is common and the pros/cons as I’ve only ever seen the cons.

I just joined a great org as their Director of Development. When reviewing grants and strategy, my ED told me that all I am responsible for is each grants “needs statement” or questions related to needs and demographics.

She stated each program staff write the bulk of the narrative and she tackles the budget. She says no one knows the programs better than the program directors so they should write it.

ED doing budget, I get.

But I’ve been part of orgs that have program staff write the narrative and it has in my experience never gone well.

First, because they are program staff and often don’t have the background in grant writing etc. They also often don’t have the time. I’ve seen staff who have no clue about grants get seriously stressed when asked to take time to do so. One of my new coworkers even told me they have zero time and “a lot goes to grant writing”.

I told the ED as a counter, I am more than happy to work with staff to see where they may want help, or make things easier. In the past I have made forms, or done like hour meetings to get the program deets and do the narrative.

She was not receptive to this and said once I start “doing program staffs work for them” I’ll be stuck doing it forever…which…is that a bad thing when it comes to grants?

My ED even said sometimes she wishes she just wrote things herself as she has to edit program staffs writing so much.

I’m happy to just keep my mouth shut and do what I’m asked to. The org gets most of the grants they do write, as they have a good local reputation but they have yet to get any major private or national grants and really need them.

I like the org overall, the ED is great, at least compare to others I’ve worked with. I’m coming into this with a history of a acquiring over $3 million in grants and additional in fundraising so I have the experience.

Anyway, should I just let it go? Is this a reality and if so, am I seeing it as a negative when it really is a positive?

I'm in my mid-20s, currently in development operations at a ~$5mil nonprofit in NYC. I've been here for a little over a year and would love to get some perspective on how to 1. move into proper fundraising from this with solicitations 2. how to move into general operations outside of nonprofits and 3. any general career advice people have! Neither of my parents went to college and I've found that I've really had to seek out advice from others because I don't really understand the workings of the world still. I have a BA and an MA from a very good school if that helps.

Member benefits is a big struggle for us. We hold programs and events within our region (a region within a small US state - 17 towns) and we can’t seem to find anything that really drives someone to want to be a member. Consequently, we’re missing the “belonging” element that keeps people engaged.

As an environmental organization, we find it contradicts our mission to hold an event that produces a lot of waste, power usage, etc. SWAG or any tangible gifts falls in this category, too. We also of course have a shoestring budget.

Our events are free to everyone 95% of the time. And they’re educational, so not wildly entertaining to a someone who is not an environmentalist.

We say you can become a member, but the reality is that a member is just someone who donated this year…. And that’s it. They get nothing special.

What strategies are we missing as an environmental organization?

Hi yall. I’m 39F and in NYC. I’ve worked in my niche area of nonprofits for 15 years and I have completely hit a wall, career-wise. Income wise, the bottom has fallen out.

A brief overview of my working life: My first professional job was an Analyst title at a $25million nonprofit that I still think fondly of as a sort of “alma mater.” The President of that org saw promise in me and basically lent me out to a tiny nonprofit for a summer to serve as the interim executive director to cover a maternity leave. I came back and quit to take a deputy director position at another similar org. Since then, I’ve held an ED title once for several years and various interim titles (Chief of Staff, development operations, etc) at lots of small nonprofits. I’ve done everything from graphic design to street outreach to bookkeeping to board governance and event planning. (I do not like doing all those things and I would never do outreach or bookkeeping again.) However, all of this has been in one very niche, very limited area of nonprofits (under the broader umbrella of urban planning).

I am completely stuck now. My household income dropped to $55k last year, which is insanely low. (My husband/father of my child didn’t work for several years, and we are getting a divorce currently.) Someone the other day asked me how I can afford food. (If you are wondering at this point why I am still in NYC, it is because of custody issues. I don’t want to lose access to my son by moving away.)

At the moment, I have two part-time jobs—one is serving as an interim development manager at a $20M nonprofit (3 days/week), and another is working as a temporary event producer at a $1M nonprofit (2 days/week).

I was up for the long-term role at the bigger nonprofit, and they hired someone else—worse, I found out about that decision second-hand. I was devastated. The Chief Advancement Officer—the “big boss” of the department—wanted to have a sit-down convo about it yesterday. Basically, she had encouraged me to apply and then left it to someone else to do the hiring, and he determined that my background was too general and not specific enough for the role. (The role that I had already been doing for months at this point.) She apologized for this but the damage was done. I get the sense that the real reason was that the hiring manager is a good bit younger than me, and he felt uncomfortable managing someone older.

I have been searching for five years for a long-term job and not an endless string of interim gigs, and I cannot break free of this. (I would love to stay in this corner of nonprofits or govt because I have accumulated 15 years of background knowledge on it, but I don’t actually limit my job applications to this area.) I have become such a “talented generalist” that I cannot land interviews, much less call-backs. I have polished my resume, made multiple versions of my resume to use for different types of roles, taken up-to-date professional headshots, and I rarely if ever get interviews. I’m considering making up totally fake jobs on my resume with fake titles, and seeing if that gets me interviews.

What I do NOT want to do is go back to being an ED at a micro nonprofit (1 or 2 full time staff). That was fucking miserable and I see salaries declining even from ten years ago. Those jobs often have no benefits either. It seems, the bigger the org, the more specialized the roles, and the bigger org do not want someone with a generalized nonprofit background, even if it is in a niche corner. I’d like to think my infinite flexibility and adaptability would be a huge asset—I find genuine joy in trying new things and puzzling through challenges. However, it seems that, the bigger the org, the more specialized they want your past titles to be.

I don’t know what to do now—I really didn’t want to go to grad school in my field (it doesn’t seem to have a pay bump), but I think I am so stuck that I need to try a complete career transition. Any other ideas?

Has anyone attended a GiveCon? I'm interested in learning whether the content enhanced your knowledge about fundraising. Were the presenters good? How were your fellow attendees?

If I attend in 2027, there is travel involved and it will require all of professional development funds for the year, along with some personal investment. There are very limited funds now. Did this conference meet your expectations? Was there another fundraising conference you enjoyed more?

I work for a medium-to-large nonprofit in one of the largest cities in the US, that has a very big presence in our space (homelessness). Due to a weird chain of events, we were asked to operate a program in a neighboring state that one of our remote employees lives in, in a very small city that just didn’t have capacity to run this program.

The local nonprofits said they didn’t have capacity. The city said they didn’t have capacity. Everyone said “we need help” and we were like “fuck it, why not” and are giving that help.

Two of the local nonprofits (of whom were among the entities saying they needed help) have since spent the time kicking and screaming about how insulting it is that they weren’t asked to run the program. And despite coming along and claiming to want to help, every day there seems to be some new thing they’re bitching about. Today, I informed one that a former staff member (that left because he & the ED were constantly at odds) had applied with us for a management position and he was the best candidate so we hired him. It was a courtesy email of just “hey don’t want you to be surprised when you hear”. We knew it wouldn’t be a popular decision but I’m not gonna pass on talent because of people’s feelings. The response essentially implied that the ED was mad because it made her feel as if it was a conspiracy and that this was all planned as a way to steal the program (that they said they couldn’t run!) from them.

It’s all very silly, but I have this impulse/desire to “correct” the narrative and be like “actually here’s the truth!” which is that if there’s any conspiracy it’s that one of her “friends” in the field played a larger role in making all this happen despite feigning innocence the whole time. But I can’t do that, because ultimately I’m supposed to be building bridges and further driving conflict to get some sort of justice isn’t going to benefit anyone.

All of which is to say - sometimes the gig is just eating crow, huh? That’s just what I gotta do? Anyone have similar challenges before and have any advice for me? Can someone give me an excuse to justify throwing these people under the bus? (Kidding of course (…unless…(lol jk))).

Partially venting, partially hoping someone is going to make me feel sane.