Articles
Disaster Relief Loans for Nonprofits During the Pandemic
What should you do to access disaster relief loans for nonprofits? With shelter-in-place orders, schools closing, and employment law changes, I know lots of nonprofits are scrambling to plan for the coming next weeks and months of the COVID-19 pandemic. For many small...
Virtual Board Meetings For Your Nonprofit: A How-To Guide
As the country hunkers down in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, I'm getting tons of questions about voting member meetings and board meetings and how to hold a virtual board meeting. Here are my best tips and Zoom settings cheat sheet... Voting member organizations...
Social Distance Doesn't Have to Mean Emotional Distance
So, things are…weird. Between school cancellations, hoping you don't run out of toilet paper, calling off big events, and working from home (if you're privileged enough to do that), our routines are being thrown out the window. And with the necessity of social...
I Just Started a Nonprofit… Do I Need Nonprofit Insurance? Part 2
Looking for part one? Read it here! So you’ve started a nonprofit, you have everything in place, and you even saw my conversation with Tom Wertish about D&O insurance. All done when it comes to nonprofit insurance, right? Well, not quite. Directors and Officers...
Nonprofit Tax Status: What Does it Really Mean Anyway?
Time to bust some MAJOR nonprofit myths. Ready? Because it is more than just nonprofit tax status? Nonprofit is a Tax Status, NOT a Business Plan. Ok, but what does that really mean? Just Because you Started a Nonprofit Doesn't Mean That you're a 501(c)(3) Public...
Do you really know what lawyers do?
What do lawyers do for nonprofits? A lot of my clients came to me for the reasons you’d expect – something got hosed up, they received a scary lawyer-letter, they were facing a HUGE problem they knew they couldn’t deal with on their own. But to be honest, I wish that...
Should Your Minnesota Nonprofit Carry Workers Comp
I know, I know, a lot of Minnesota nonprofits don’t have workers comp. Say you don’t have any employees, only 1099 contractors. Or, everything is run by volunteers. Or, the board is the only people involved. Most people would assume that a Minnesota nonprofit doesn’t...
Treat Your Nonprofit Idea Like Your Wedding
Planning a wedding, or a nonprofit idea, is often a ton of work (assuming you don’t decide to elope). There are a lot of factors to consider, and usually you don’t even know all the steps. Naturally, we turn to the internet, right? When I Googled “how to plan a...
THIS can hurt your chances at property tax exemption
In my home state of Minnesota, nonprofits can apply for property tax exemption if they use their real estate for mission delivery. Usually this is a faceless process, the nonprofit applies on paper and has to send in its 990s and other materials to the county tax...