How-To Guides

Strategic plan templates fail when they treat the plan as a document. This guide covers useful sections, operating cadence, and board alignment.

Seven specific strategic planning mistakes that produce plans no one uses, goals no one tracks, and revenue projections that collapse when grant applications

FASB eliminated 'temporarily restricted' as a net asset category in 2018. The term still appears in grant agreements, board reports, and auditor workpapers -

Grants management refers to post-award administration - the compliance, financial tracking, and documentation work that starts when an award letter arrives

What 2 CFR Part 200 requires for federal grant reporting, including SF-425 deadlines, Single Audit thresholds, record retention rules, and agency-specific

A practical guide to building pre-approval workflows that prevent grant expenditure findings - covering who approves what, when, and how to document the trail

A practical guide to building a grant compliance program for a resource-constrained nonprofit - the four pillars (policies, procedures, training, monitoring)

A grant spend-down report shows budget versus actual by category, remaining balance, and projected burn rate to the end of the award period. This guide covers

Monthly grant reconciliation has four steps: bank and ledger, grant to ledger, restricted balance check, and upcoming drawdown review. This guide covers each

A practical guide to subrecipient risk assessment under 2 CFR 200.332 - risk factors, scoring approach, documentation requirements, and what to do when you

An executive director needs to see total restricted fund balances, risk flags, upcoming reporting deadlines, and expiring funds - without reading a finance

A practical guide to 2 CFR 200.430 personnel cost documentation - contemporaneous records, split-funded positions, what a defensible T&E system looks like