What Improvements Should You Make Before Selling Your Business?
You’ve made the decision to sell. How can you get the most for your business? It probably won’t be by putting it on the market as is, unless you’re one of the fortunate few who sell at the lifecycle peak. Too many owners wait until the business is in the decline phase and is losing…
Fiscal Responsibility Primary Goal of Board of Directors
Although each board’s involvement in its not-for-profit agency’s operations varies from situation to situation, all boards share a mandate to exercise fiscal responsibility. Certainly, complying with self-dealing rules and following the letter of the bylaws are requirements of fiscal responsibility. But they may be just the minimum requirements. Here are three ways for boards to…
What If Someone Makes an Offer You Can’t Refuse?
How many times have you said, “If someone walks in the door and offers me the right amount of money for this business, I’m out of here”? But have you really given this possibility serious consideration? What is the “right amount” of money? What would you do with yourself after you sell the business? Is…
Does Your Nonprofit Need a Business Plan?
A business plan is like a road map. It can help you get where you’re going. It also can tell you that it may not be a good idea to begin the journey. Whether it’s in the for-profit or nonprofit world, money is the fuel that provides the power to run an organization. In the…
20 Steps to Stopping Embezzlement Before It Happens
Three out of four employees who embezzle from their employers work in the finance, bookkeeping or accounting department. Embezzlement can literally cost an organization millions, so it makes sense to put extra controls on the employees who are handling the money – and may have more temptation. More care and concern should be taken in…
Tax Court Criticized in Estate’s Art Case
The collection includes artwork by many famous artists, including Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne, Jackson Pollock and Henry Moore, to name a few. The question was how much a partial interest in the art collection of Houston millionaire James A. Elkins was worth – and if a discount was due. About one quarter of the collection…
Tax Evasion: Is There a Statute of Limitations on Evidence?
When it comes to relevant evidence in an income tax evasion case, is there a statute of limitations? Chet Lee West found out the hard way that there isn’t. You cannot suppress evidence, claiming it was barred under the six-year statute of limitations, when charged with income tax evasion, the court found in the case…
Two High-Profile Thefts at Nonprofits should be Lesson
Nonprofit organizations are not any safer from fraudulent activity than for-profit companies – as two recent cases at respected charities testify. The controller of the Hereditary Disease Foundation was recently charged with embezzling more than $1.8 million of the research group’s funds over a nine-year period. The founder of USA Harvest, one of the nation’s…
Corruption Schemes Problem for Big Business
Corruption. It’s a word you hear most in context with crooked politicians, bad cops or unstable foreign governments. But corruption is also a big problem for businesses. In fact, corruption schemes are at the root of more than one-third of employee fraud at large businesses, according to the most recent biannual report of the Association…
Which State’s Retirees Maintain Living Standards Most?
Retired residents of the District of Columbia and Nevada appear to be living at standards closer to their pre-retirement days than retirees in other states – while those in Massachusetts and North Dakota are coming up the shortest. That’s according to US Census Bureau statistics which found that retirees in the District of Columbia earn…