Indirect costs that are used in the calculation of your indirect cost rate aren’t always the same as management and general costs in your financial statements.
Sometimes a specific program will require administrative costs for that program only. So those administrative costs would be directly assigned to that program.
In other cases costs, that are potentially direct, may be combined with indirect costs for convenience. For example costs like copies and supplies, which could be tracked directly to programs are generally combined with indirect costs because it is inefficient to track them for direct assignment .
BUT, in many cases indirect and general & administrative will be the same, especially for smaller and medium-sized organizations.
Using management and general as your indirect costs makes your annual reporting of actual indirect costs very easy, and also simplifies tracking your indirect costs percentage to make sure you are not billing significantly more or less indirect cost than you are incurring.
John F Heveron, Jr. Principal, Heveron and Company CPAs
What role does the public have in monitoring the use of our tax dollars and specifically the disability community’s participation as a check and balance on financial priorities? Tax filings have a lot of information but do the CILs have a responsibility to provide additional, clarifying information about line items or tax schedules?
Mission statements often say the organization is “accountable,” but they don’y say to whom? Are Centers only accountable to the IRS or the DSE? Does the requirement to be “community-based” mean Centers are responsible to the people served and eligible to be served?
Example. How do Centers and SILCs calculate employee compensation? Recently, I learned my SILC has two employees and it is unclear to me what they actually do in service to the Council which meets four times a year. The Exec Director is paid $90,000.00 plus generous benefits; that is just plain offensive in a program serving people who literally live-on $10 or $12,000 a year. Since neither employee is a person with a significant disability the jumbo compensation doesn’t even contribute to the disability community’s income statistics. *
Dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s for accurate accounting is necessary, but in IL that is not enough to close the circle and give authority to consumers in the communities served.
* In 2016, the median earnings of people with disabilities ages 16 and over in the US was $22,047, about two-thirds of the median earnings of people without disabilities, $32,479. (An earnings disparity of over $10,000 in median earnings between those with and without disabilities continues a trend, which has existed since at least 2008 and has increased in magnitude since 2013.) according to 2017 annual report from Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Community Living, National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) – Rehabilitation Research and Training Centers (RRTCs)
Centers funded by Part B funds only are accountable to the Designated State Entity, as are those in states described in Section 723 in the Rehabilitation Act where the state is contributing more than the federal government to the centers. Centers funded by Part C with federal grants directly to the center are overseen by the Office if Independent Living Programs. All centers are non-profits and therefore must file a 990 form, but as not-for-profit entities they typically don’t file other taxes.
I am asking about IL history and philosophy as directed in the Rehab Act. Are CILs only government programs and subordinate only to state, federal and corporate regulations?What is the relationship between centers and consumers as intended by the authors of title 7? Is ILRU only concerned with the legal responsibilities of contracts or do you support IL as a grassroots community of disability activists that is fundamentally a self-help movement?
The relationship between consumers and centers is specific that the organization itself sets up the structure to assure that the board, management and staff are people with disabilities. There is not a prescribed mechanism for control by or even input from other consumers, if that is what you are asking. ILRU is the technical assistance and training entity for the federal grantees funded in Title VII. We are not a regulatory body and do not typically provide technical assistance beyond those funded in Title VII of the Rehabilitation Act. We do not address legal responsibilities beyond the Title VII grantees, and cannot support disability activists directly with technical assistance.