Financial documents
This page is for treasurers and directors. Openness about money is the strongest argument a non-profit has with donors. Exponential is a publishing tool here: it does not do accounting and calculates no figures. You publish what your accounts and your auditor have produced.
Note
What you must publish depends on your country, your legal form and your funders. This page lists common practice, not legal duties. Ask your accountant.
Contents
- What non-profits commonly publish
- Three ways to publish
- An HTML summary that people read
- Grant spending
- Check before publishing
- Approval and timing
- Checklist
What non-profits commonly publish
| Document | Typical form |
|---|---|
| Annual financial statements (audited or reviewed) | PDF, per year |
| Annual regulatory filing | PDF, per year |
| Where the money goes | A short HTML page with a table or chart |
| Budget for the current year | PDF or HTML |
| Fundraising costs | A figure in the annual review or a page |
| Grants received and from whom | A list, if funders allow it to be public |
| Pay of the highest paid, where your law requires it | As your filing states it |
Three ways to publish
| Way | Fits | How in Exponential |
|---|---|---|
| Documents | The official statements | File objects by year (Annual publications as downloads) |
| A summary page | Donors and the public | An article with a table and a link to the statement |
| A register kept as content | Many similar entries (grants received, grants given) | A small class of your own with one object per entry (Spending and contract publishing) |
A register kept as content can be exported for others to use; see Open data, RSS and REST.
An HTML summary that people read
Most donors will not open a forty-page PDF. Write a one-screen summary:
- Total income and where it came from (donations, grants, other), as a small table.
- Total spending and on what (programs, fundraising, administration).
- One sentence of context per figure.
- A link to the full statement, with format and size.
Tables need header cells and should be simple (Tables in content). If you show a chart as an image, give the figures as text too.
Grant spending
Funders sometimes ask you to publish how their grant was spent. Use one page per grant or a register entry with: funder, amount, period, purpose, outcome summary, and a link to the outcome document (Grant outcomes for funders). Check the grant agreement for what you may publish.
Check before publishing
| Check | Why |
|---|---|
| No personal data of donors, beneficiaries or staff beyond what the law requires | Privacy (Privacy checks before publishing data) |
| No commercially confidential terms of contracts | Agreements with suppliers |
| Signatures and bank details removed or redacted | Fraud risk |
| The version matches the approved, final document | Avoid publishing drafts |
Redaction is a manual step done before upload (Redaction is a manual step).
Approval and timing
- Keep financial pages in a section only staff may edit (Volunteers as editors).
- Use an approval workflow so the treasurer approves before publication (Approval before publishing).
- Publish on the date the board approves, with scheduled publication if useful (Scheduled publishing).
- Corrections are visible, never silent (Annual publications as downloads).
Checklist
- To do: List of documents to publish agreed with the accountant.
- To do: Statements as files by year; summary page in HTML.
- To do: Personal and confidential data checked and removed.
- To do: Treasurer approved; published on the agreed date.
- To do: Giving page links to the summary.
- To do: Reviewed every year (Annual checklist).
Related pages
- Transparency for non-profits
- Spending and contract publishing
- Budget lines for hosting and maintenance
- Free documentation: this page is free to copy, translate and improve under the GNU FDL 1.3.
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