Accounting Guidance: Preparing for First Non-990 Filing

Our goal for this project is to get our in-house bookkeeper up to speed on nonprofit accounting practices and prepare our organization for its first non-990 tax filing. We are looking for guidance on categories and best practices to help everyone save time and energy, as well as to be walked through several examples, and setting us up for future success.

Specifically, we’d like the volunteer to:

-Review our current bookkeeping categories and recommend adjustments for compliance and efficiency
-Share best practices for nonprofit financial reporting and recordkeeping
-Walk our bookkeeper through a few sample scenarios to build confidence in preparing for the filing

The deliverable will be a tailored set of recommendations and examples that will serve as a practical guide for our bookkeeper and position our organization for future success.

Our organization is just 3 years old. We weathered the storm of the initial years, growing steadily in Oregon. We were then picked up by a Senator and sponsored for a C.I.P. Grant through the Federal House of Appropriations for $700k in 2025. The new administration came about in January, and our funding was withdrawn. We are driving forward anyway, seeking multiple new funding sources. For this, we need to find an accountant to make sure our books are tight. We have enlisted a bookkeeper from a local company, but they do not specialize in nonprofit work and we will need a full accountant this year as we have officially surpassed the $50k annual revenue to file a 990 tax form. Our bookkeeper desires to be fully involved but needs assistance and guidance to ensure proper execution. We are looking for pro Bono work, specifically as the team that runs the organization is stretched thin despite their overwhelming support. The executive director accomplishes an awful lot and works well over 40 hours a week, but only takes home $20k a year (and did it for free until this spring) because he believes in what Trajectory does and has seen the positive outcomes; Trajectory gives out more money than that in scholarships alone each year. This means we are currently looking for nonprofit bookkeeping guidance and someone to clean up the records and guide us through our first complex tax filing.

We have enlisted the assistance of a professional bookkeeper who works for Vanport International and have been having monthly meetings since Spring in anticipation of this work. Our team has watched videos and done research through QuickBooks and others about best practices and how to document. We have cleaned up the books and categorized everything in QuickBooks up through this fiscal year, and are currently working on doing the same for this year.

The Director has used "Stride" to document the majority of receipt expenses and keeps all others in a file; there is limited access to the company accounts to reduce potential errors or confusion. Major events, like Forest Festival and Mt. Festival, have separate budget tracking available in Excel sheets.