Yes, we’re currently in the process of hiring a bookkeeper (interviewed one, scheduling interviews with 2 others), which will allow us to get our books in enough order that an accountant will audit our statements. We do have an outside accountant prepare our 990s already. Anyway, this all requires donations. We can’t get our books cleaned up and audited unless we have the money to do so.
Also, it’s my impression that many or most charities our size and smaller don’t have their books audited by an accountant because it’s expensive to do so. It’s largely the kind of thing a charity does when they have a bigger budget than we currently do. But I’d be curious to see if there are statistics on this somewhere; I could be wrong.
And yes, we are investigating the possibility of getting pro bono work from an accounting firm; it’s somewhere around #27 on my “urgent to-do list.” :)
Edit: BTW, anyone seriously concerned about this matter is welcome to earmark their donations for “CPA audit” so that those donations are only used for (1) paying a bookkeeper to clean up our processes enough so that an accountant will sign off on them, and (2) paying for a CPA audit of our books. I will personally make sure those earmarks are honored.
How many possible universes could here be (what % of the universes), where not donating to a charity that does not do accounting right when pulling in 500 grand a year, would result in destruction of mankind? 500 grand a year is not so little when you can get away with it. My GF’s family owns a company smaller than that (in the US) and it has books in order.
Yeah, that would be really unfair, wouldn’t it? And so it’s hard to believe it could be true. And so it must not be.
(I actually don’t believe it is likely to be true. But the fact it sounds silly and unfairly out-of-proportion is one of the worst possible arguments against it.)
Yes, we’re currently in the process of hiring a bookkeeper (interviewed one, scheduling interviews with 2 others), which will allow us to get our books in enough order that an accountant will audit our statements. We do have an outside accountant prepare our 990s already. Anyway, this all requires donations. We can’t get our books cleaned up and audited unless we have the money to do so.
Also, it’s my impression that many or most charities our size and smaller don’t have their books audited by an accountant because it’s expensive to do so. It’s largely the kind of thing a charity does when they have a bigger budget than we currently do. But I’d be curious to see if there are statistics on this somewhere; I could be wrong.
And yes, we are investigating the possibility of getting pro bono work from an accounting firm; it’s somewhere around #27 on my “urgent to-do list.” :)
Edit: BTW, anyone seriously concerned about this matter is welcome to earmark their donations for “CPA audit” so that those donations are only used for (1) paying a bookkeeper to clean up our processes enough so that an accountant will sign off on them, and (2) paying for a CPA audit of our books. I will personally make sure those earmarks are honored.
How many possible universes could here be (what % of the universes), where not donating to a charity that does not do accounting right when pulling in 500 grand a year, would result in destruction of mankind? 500 grand a year is not so little when you can get away with it. My GF’s family owns a company smaller than that (in the US) and it has books in order.
Yeah, that would be really unfair, wouldn’t it? And so it’s hard to believe it could be true. And so it must not be.
(I actually don’t believe it is likely to be true. But the fact it sounds silly and unfairly out-of-proportion is one of the worst possible arguments against it.)