Question from a new Executive Director: Between the death of the prior director and the date I started, my center had a board member who really stepped up and made sure things ran smoothly. Now the board is discussing how
Disability Determination and Consumer Control
Consumer control is an important foundational philosophy of Independent Living. Centers are required to have more than 50% board members who are people with significant disabilities, and more than 50% staff, and managers, who have disabilities. SILCs must have more
Can we buy T-shirts with our grant and sell them?
Question: Do you know of any rule or federal law that prohibits us at the State level (SILC) from selling T-shirts or doing any other type of fundraising or collecting donations to our organization. Our funding is minuscule and we
How do I teach consumer control to staff?
Question: I’m particularly focused on boundaries and personal choice as reminder to existing peers in their work with consumers. As happens with many of us in any human service in our desire to “help,” I’ve had a couple situations in
What should you do when you discover waste, fraud or abuse of funds?
Embezzlement is a very specific type of fraud, and most cases involve taking money from an employer through deceit. Usually the person embezzling is the person who cuts your checks, and often they have developed an elaborate ruse to use
Eight practices to prevent fraud and theft
From time to time you hear about theft within non-profit organizations. Usually the organization did not have sufficient internal controls to prevent or catch the situation, and sometimes the thief gets by with it for years. Here are eight practices
What are the IRS requirements for my CIL?
Just because your non-profit doesn’t pay federal income tax doesn’t mean you have no dealings with the Internal Revenue Service. You are required to file an annual report to the IRS of your standing as a non-profit. This form is
Which comes first?
As Centers and SILCs, we have a number of regulations that we follow, and some take priority over others. So if they don’t say the same thing, which one are we supposed to follow? Recently the Independent Living Administration clarified
Are indirect costs the same as administrative costs?
Question: I am interested in your thoughts on something. I know we’ve always said that the indirect costs are not the same as G&A. However, when we submit the proposal we have to include the statement of functional expenses from
A dozen ways to reduce the risk of theft
It happened again just a few weeks ago. This isn’t the first time a center has been victimized by employee theft. And usually it is the bookkeeper or accountant, someone you trusted. Often they are not small thefts, but larger