The past 10 years have been exciting ones for the Hill-Snowdon Foundation and the Snowdon family. For 40 years prior, we acted as a typical family foundation, coming together once a year to nominally approve grants recommended by family members. We funded some wonderful organizations reflecting the varied interests of the family, but you would... Read More
Consultants allow your foundation to gain expertise on a part-time basis without the cost and office space for full-time staff. Moreover, the board doesn’t need to supervise the consultant as they would a staff person. Consultants are skilled professionals who can help you move your program forward. Depending on the task at hand, they can... Read More
As managing director of a small family foundation, I had often wondered what would happen if the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) or the state attorney general came knocking on our foundation’s door. Would we be prepared for an audit? Would the foundation be in compliance with legal and tax reporting requirements? Did our original organizational... Read More
The primary purpose of financial statements is to communicate the financial health of the grantee. A non-accountant should be able to understand a well- written statement. The balance sheet, a statement of position, views a grantee on a specific date. The income statement, a statement of activity, looks at a year’s operating activity. The statement... Read More
Program related investments (PRIs) are loans or other investments made by a foundation to support its charitable purpose. PRIs count toward a foundation’s distribution requirement as long as they meet a few basic requirements, and the best part is that the funds generally are returned to the foundation to be used for other PRIs or... Read More
Budgets are both a financial tool to help manage operations and a fiscal control mechanism. They give your board a clear sense of available, committed, and unrestricted funds, and help the board understand the relationship between operating costs and grantmaking expenditures. Read on for a comparative look at two different foundation budgets—one from each coast—to... Read More