My wife Anne is a Road Warrior – not of the Dennis Hopper/Easy Rider variety, or even Thelma & Louise. She’s more like Charles Kuralt, “On the Road,” by herself, in search of Americana. I join her for segments of these road trips, stretching my weekends to catch up with her anywhere in the U.S. […]
An inventory of some key financial issues among my current clients emphasizes once again that it is seldom a brilliant decision that makes the difference between profit and loss. Rather, it is the development of well-considered financial policies and procedures and their persistent implementation that leads to persistent profitability. The challenge is to identify the basis of the issues in order to start rooting out the weeds.
Intentionally or not, an organization’s “corporate culture” almost always develops from the top down. In implementing their management philosophies, many successful entrepreneurs develop an internal financial strategy for their employees to complement the external strategy for their investors. The net result often is a group dynamic in which the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts, and everyone contributes to rolling out the dough.
The biggest winter storm in Massachusetts during our otherwise mild January was the one that the Legislature kicked up when it attempted to pass S1074, known as the Church Financial Scrutiny Bill. Ultimately voted down by a wide margin after intense pressure by religious groups of all persuasions, the bill would have required religious communities to disclose their finances and property to the Attorney General and pay for CPA reviews and audits. Aside from being a full-employment bill for any CPA still looking for work after Sarbanes-Oxley, the initiative raised some useful questions about transparency, disclosure, and accounting and controls in churches and in charities generally. Consider: what accountability can you expect when you contribute to any charitable organization?