Is your Holiday Fair Fun?

You’ve heard the saying Shop Local, well I really put it to the test shopping ‘til I drop at the schools, churches, community centers and libraries, supporting my nonprofits.  I buy almost all my gifts at these events and then I supplement by making calendars of photos I’ve taken throughout the year.  Of course, if you have a teen boy to buy for, it may not work completely for you and you may end up at the mall.  Power tools also don’t seem to be sold. 

As a management consultant, however, I’m always thinking about what makes sense.  Of course, the first question is: do these holiday fairs raise money?  You can, of course, add up how much you make.  That doesn’t require a consultant. 

That brings me to an issue I can help you with.  Is there a purpose to your holiday fair?  I’m dismayed there are no signs informing me about a goal or purpose. I suppose they assume it is a given that the money helps the community center or daycare or library.  Of the many fairs I attended this November and December, my local high school fair was the only one with a purpose and I’m jealous; it was to raise funds for the kids to go to Guatemala.  Even the church fair, temporarily in the local firehouse, didn’t have a sign even though I full well know that the church is remodeling its kitchen and community room. 

I recently read that nonprofits are increasingly using twitter to raise money.  Since these are short bursts of information, the nonprofit must keep to the point, something like only $2,000 to reach our goal for a new gym.  A simple sign as you enter the holiday fair might do the same   Of course, I’ll still go no matter.

Maybe the purpose is tied to tradition and emotions.  It’s fun to shop, get together, and have a homemade doughnut or muffin in the morning at one fair and wind up at another fair to have chowder or soup with friends, acquaintances, and parishioners.  That doesn’t mean your nonprofit board shouldn’t look at the cost and commitment.  I was concerned when I saw one of the libarians volunteering her time at the holiday book sale.    Librarians don’t get paid much and to volunteer is a commitment. 

My question to your board is: is the holiday fair fun for volunteers and staff?  I hope you answered yes, because I’ll be there!

Should you advertise your nonprofit as employment at will?

Should you advertise that you are employment at will?

While I was attending a school board meeting, a superintendent differentiated his staff from the unionized school staff as employment-at-will.  Employment at will means that you can terminate an employee at any time for any reason.  He was actually wrong about his status and that of his staff.  He has a contract.  If his employer, the school board, decides to dismiss him at any time, then it has violated the contract.  I’ve seen this time and time again in local government.  Local governments are surprised when they have to pay a town manager when they’ve violated the contract they sign. Second, public sector employees have constitutional due process right to their job.  In effect that means that the public employer has to provide some sort of grievance procedure, an appeal procedure of some sort. 

It’s true that the remainder of employers are employers-at-will with the caveat of those with employees who have a union contract or individual contract.  Most courts have upheld this common law principle with very few exceptions, even whistleblowers lack protection according to NY courts.  This is good news for the nonprofit (or private sector employer) that wants to be free of interventions.  Do you have a statement to this fact on, say, your application, in an employee handbook, or letter of a job offering?  Do you make new employees sign a statement that the offer letter or employee handbook does not constitute a contract?  If so, then you are highlighting your right of employment at will.  Now take a look at your policies? Do they conflict with this idea?  Do you actually want to be known as an employer-at-will? 

Do you have

• An individual or union contract with any employees
• Grievance procedure
• EEO policy (you can’t fire a person based upon Sex, National Origin, Race, Religion, Color, Disability, Age, and in some states Sexual Orientation)
• An introductory period or probationary period
• An evaluation process, a promotion process based upon favorable evaluations
• A disciplinary process
• An exit interview process

All these policies are the types of policies your lawyer on your board would recommend you have, but they send a decidedly different message from prominently stating your right to be an employment-at-will. 

As you review your policies, consider what you are trying to do.  Is employment-at-will the policy you most want to highlight.  If so, then you might want to eliminate some of the policies highlighted above.  If not, then you might highlight your mission, your good reputation as an employer, your family friendly policies, great benefits, or satisfied employees.

No matter what you decide, your employees who are let go without cause or documentation are eligible for unemployment.  Firing for no apparent reason will most certainly cause you to pay unemployment no matter what state you are in and no matter whether you say you are employment-at-will or not.

Taxing Nonprofits

As we begin the budget debate here in Maine Governor LePage has put out a plan to gradually reduce the income tax by, among other things, allowing communities to levy the  property tax on    large nonprofits and eliminating revenue sharing to communities.  What is probably ideological is his desire to reduce income tax in favor of an increased sales, renamed consumption tax, and a return to more taxing at the local level.  What is probably not an ideological, but pragmatic, is the search for new goods, services, and now properties to tax. 

For both nonprofits and local communities this raises all sorts of implications.  As it is now, some nonprofits pay sales taxes when they purchase goods, others do not.  Maine exempts large swaths of nonprofits form paying sales tax, primarily in the heath area, hospitals and clinics, but not educational health organizations;  churches; schools; and nonprofit fire departments, for example.  Nonprofits also pay property taxes and income taxes on businesses in which they make a profit.  Usually these businesses are established to feed back funds into the nonprofit and are common in healthcare.   The medical lab of Eastern Maine Healthcare is for profit to support the hospital as a whole.

Nonprofits will want to defend themselves, by citing aggregate services they provide to the economy, jobs they provide and services they provide that government does not have to provide.  This will not be enough.  This argument could be made by for profits as well, and libertarians would go so far as to say that businesses should not be taxed at all because they are the job creators.  Most of us, however, are more pragmatic and see it as necessary to levy taxes on businesses and some nonprofits.

The difference has to be in how nonprofits convey what they do with greater transparency.  As a member of my community's warrant committee, each year we ask nonprofits who are requesting a donation from the town to provide basic financial figures and the number of persons served and any subsidies to community members.

This should not be hard to find in the days of the internet, yet it often is.  In fact, many nonprofits don't even identify themselves as nonprofit on their websites.  In a study I conducted of Indiana nonprofit websites (excluding hospitals, but not clinics), a little over half,  53%, identified  themselves as a nonprofit by using such words as nonprofit, non-profit, not-for-profit, nonprofit, charity, 501c3 (an IRS identification of a nonprofit), 990 (the form that nonprofits must send to the IRS), or tax-exempt. 

Hospitals have one more obligation: they must provide a community benefit form, to the public and IRS, in order to retain their nonprofit status.  Community benefits include subsidized health care, unreimbursed costs, and patient and community health education.  These reports may not be enough if we can't easily distinguish whether a hospital is for profit or nonprofit.  Educational institutions are under no such similar obligation and we often call these large institutions, private, think of Bates, Bowdoin, and Colby, to distinguish them from our state educational institutions.  They, too, will need to be more transparent in what community benefits they provide in lieu of property taxes. 

I will discuss nonprofit transparency further in a coming blog.

Taxing Nonprofits

As we begin the budget debate here in Maine Governor LePage has put out a plan to gradually reduce the income tax by, among other things, allowing communities to levy the  property tax on    large nonprofits and eliminating revenue sharing to communities.  What is probably ideological is his desire to reduce income tax in favor of an increased sales, renamed consumption tax, and a return to more taxing at the local level.  What is probably not an ideological, but pragmatic, is the search for new goods, services, and now properties to tax. 

For both nonprofits and local communities this raises all sorts of implications.  As it is now, some nonprofits pay sales taxes when they purchase goods, others do not.  Maine exempts large swaths of nonprofits form paying sales tax, primarily in the heath area, hospitals and clinics, but not educational health organizations;  churches; schools; and nonprofit fire departments, for example.  Nonprofits also pay property taxes and income taxes on businesses in which they make a profit.  Usually these businesses are established to feed back funds into the nonprofit and are common in healthcare.   The medical lab of Eastern Maine Healthcare is for profit to support the hospital as a whole.

Nonprofits will want to defend themselves, by citing aggregate services they provide to the economy, jobs they provide and services they provide that government does not have to provide.  This will not be enough.  This argument could be made by for profits as well, and libertarians would go so far as to say that businesses should not be taxed at all because they are the job creators.  Most of us, however, are more pragmatic and see it as necessary to levy taxes on businesses and some nonprofits.

The difference has to be in how nonprofits convey what they do with greater transparency.  As a member of my community's warrant committee, each year we ask nonprofits who are requesting a donation from the town to provide basic financial figures and the number of persons served and any subsidies to community members.

This should not be hard to find in the days of the internet, yet it often is.  In fact, many nonprofits don't even identify themselves as nonprofit on their websites.  In a study I conducted of Indiana nonprofit websites (excluding hospitals, but not clinics), a little over half,  53%, identified  themselves as a nonprofit by using such words as nonprofit, non-profit, not-for-profit, nonprofit, charity, 501c3 (an IRS identification of a nonprofit), 990 (the form that nonprofits must send to the IRS), or tax-exempt. 

Hospitals have one more obligation: they must provide a community benefit form, to the public and IRS, in order to retain their nonprofit status.  Community benefits include subsidized health care, unreimbursed costs, and patient and community health education.  These reports may not be enough if we can't easily distinguish whether a hospital is for profit or nonprofit.  Educational institutions are under no such similar obligation and we often call these large institutions, private, think of Bates, Bowdoin, and Colby, to distinguish them from our state educational institutions.  They, too, will need to be more transparent in what community benefits they provide in lieu of property taxes. 

I will discuss nonprofit transparency further in a coming blog.

The New Age Friendly Maine

The New Age Friendly Maine

One of my friends who is a new mother was commenting on the difficulty of carrying all the equipment around with her, particularly that ubiquitous hard baby bucket.  She wished that there were hooks on the wall so that she didn’t have to put the bucket on the floor, just as there are railings along some walls for those who are unsteady on their feet. 

As many bemoan the aging of the population in Maine and cry for economic development to keep or bring young people to the state, some communities are embracing the reality to create a better place to live for all of us, whether old or young.  That’s the case with Bowdoinham where I talked with town manager William Post and the new coordinator for Older Adult Services, Patricia Oh, about creating an age friendly community.  As Bowdoinham created its most recent comprehensive plan, it learned what other communities have learned that the community was aging.  Rather than looking at the negative, with the help of a needs’ assessment carried out by Patricia Oh, Bowdoinham created a dynamic advisory committee, all 60 and over, to develop activities for seniors but also to create more inclusive community events that incorporated activities for seniors.  This year’s Celebrate Bowdoinham included events for the whole family, but following the recommendations of the Advisory Committee increased the number of handicapped parking areas, added a drop off area closer to events, added seating areas, and expanded activities specifically for older residents, including bingo, a shared memory board, a gaming table (cribbage and QWIRKL), a trivia contest, and extra space for socialization under a tent.

Towns with a recreation center, a Y, or a town rec program can do the same. That is the social aspect. 

Bowdoinham wants to be more than a place where social activities are present for older adults. It wants to make the community to be a place for all people, not only in terms of the social environment but also the physical environment.  Anyone who has watched a toddler or older person, a woman in heels, or a person navigating a wheel chair knows the perils of uneven pavement.  That’s part of making the physical environment age friendly. 

Bowdoinham has become the first designated community in Maine to be included in the WHO Global Network of Age-friendly Cities and Communities.  To have this designation, Bowdoinham is constantly examining common sense needs from pedestrian friendly intersections and other transportation needs, to civic participation and inclusion, to ways to communicate with all population groups. What Bowdoinham has found is a wealth of untapped institutional memory to help the community grow.

Though certainly we need to have new jobs, improving the quality of life, whether for our young people, older people, or those somewhere in the middle, will do a lot to keep people in Maine and attract others.

If you want to learn more, you can go to Bowdoinham’s website, Advisory Committee on Aging  and to the World HealthOrganization Age Friendly checklist   Other communities are actively pursuing a senior friendly environment such as Ellsworth and Bar Harbor. As Michelle Beal, City Manager of Ellsworth said in a recent Ellsworth American story, helping seniors makes sense. They don't cost a lot for the city and meeting their needs is an economic development opportunity.