The cheapest way to save money is to take a little time and clip coupons that come out weekly with your local paper. If you plan meals around the coupons that meet your dietary needs you are guaranteed money. For a family of four this is easily a $20 savings each week. Nonprofit organizations can save 100’s. You can prepare during the commercial breaks when watching TV. For those of you willing to do some research try the Internet and contact the manufacturing of products you like or coupon sites.

According to the Wall Street Journal and checking out some web sites myself, there are two web sites which I feel offered the best return for coupons and worth checking out to save money.   The web sites are:

http://www.thecouponclippers.com/

https://www.centsoff.com/default.asp

Become an educated organization and begin to make changes. As nonprofit organizations you will recoup you costs more quickly than for-profits.

Check out Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and its information on Alternatives to Oil. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternatives_to_oil

Check out this web site on the use of Hemp and all of the products produced from it. http://everything.hemp.com/

Steps to take to lower impact to the environment and lower your costs.

1. Take advantage of video conferencing
2. Buy products on line, in bulk and those that have a lesser impact on the environment and ultimately lower your costs. Look for recycled or local products.
3. Request local businesses carry products that are made of recycled material.
4. Send email instead of mail.
5. Create a web experience for volunteering and delivering some of your services.
6. Raise money to be make changes to be carbon neutral.

First there was Whale Oil and then there was fossil fuels. It is time to start planning and make changes.

Steps to take:

1. Access the organization’s energy consumption, the waste produced across all operations and product choices.
2. Find out what the natural resources are in your geographic location.
3. Use locally produced resources to lower the impact to the environment and in the long run lower your costs.
4. Come up with a plan to reduce the impact of your organization and a plan to move forward.
5. Educate your organizations staff and community of your priority list to change your impact and how everyone can help.

Here are a few quick suggestions:

1. Recycle printer cartridges; I have used http://www.ecyclegroup.com/ and got money back. Have the whole community participate.

2. Stop using bottle water. Stop sending bottles to landfill and using trucks to drivery water bottles at the office. Put in filtration systems and give staff containers. I have used Atlas http://www.atlaswatersystems.com/

For reducing the impact and costs for driving try:

1. Reduce to a four day work week.
2. Conduct scheduled car maintenance
3. Drive during non rush hour periods.
4. Do not use air conditioning
5. Car pool
6. Rent a Hybrid

It is important for a nonprofit to plan on how it is going to raise money or support for its organization. To help nonprofits in their outline of the planning the process I have provided 6 questions below.

1. Do you have a Strategic Plan?

2. Do you have a Development Plan?

3. Is the Development Plan incorporated into the Strategic Plan?

4. Can you describe for your nonprofit each outcome in three sentences or less?

5. Is each outcome for the nonprofit something that can be publicize?

6. Do you know what it costs the nonprofit to deliver each outcome?

If you answer no to any of the six, your nonprofit needs to improve to be more successful in raising money.

Just because some things cost a lot of money does not mean you can not buy it. By saving your small money each week it adds up to big money. When you buy the thing you want you feel like a genius. After you do that you feel proud of your self.

Money just takes time.

If your institutional investments dropped dramatically you may have been effected by sub-prime investments that you were not aware of. It is the responsibility of the board and the CEO to know exactly how their monies were invested and to know under what circumstances their advisor was authorized to invest in such securities with a nonprofits monies.

So ask for the detail and if you were wronged take action.  A number of institutions, governments and individuals have taken legal action against financial companies for mixing high risk securities into their moderate low risk investments.

Amid the 2008 financial melt down organizations and individuals have been further adversely effected with the traditional financial institutions. The yield on savings, money-market accounts, and certificate of deposits are dropping dramatically.

There are basically only two types of entities who are giving a better return;  Credit Unions and Small Banks.  It just goes to show you that local banking just might be a better way to bank and an avenue to building sound financial relationships.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts is a nonprofit organization that is a health care insurance entity. The CEO was paid 1.36 million in 2006 and 3.6 million in 2007. The Chairman was paid 1.73 million in 2007. The former chairman received 16.4 million to retire in 2007. Average premiums increased 7.5 percent.

The CEO of Harvard Pilgrim was paid 1.38 million in 2007. The CEO of Tufts Health Plan was paid 1.19 million in 2007.

If the President of the USA can be paid a salary of $400,000 then that should be enough for any executive of a nonprofit regardless of revenues.

Since these organizations are acting like for-profits in the manner in which they run their organization compensations and incur costs should they be stripped of their nonprofit status?

The states should allow access to the nonprofit organizations to have their employees be on the state medicare system for a flat fee per month. This will give the medicare and nonprofit system better pricing options.

The other option is to have nonprofits create a cooperative insurance company that they have better control over for costs and benefits.

Health care insurance and medical expenses should not have to make you bleed money as well!!!

Keeping control of your organization’s costs by having independent contractors could cost your organization a lot more if not done right.

The safest way to know whether your organization should consider having the individual(s) as employees can be resolved by filling out an SS-8 IRS form.  The forms are on line and the questions clear to understand.

Basically the questions are do you control where, when and how the person does they duties.  If you say yes to all three, then hands down they are your employees.  It gets more difficult to answer when the work for an individual is intermittent and/or temporary.  The focus still is on control.  The individual working for more than one entity, or who is compensated based on a specific product outcome, or is the individual who bears all responsibility of other hires they make and is free from direction and control of the hiring organization, is more likely not an employee.

One of the hardest areas of designation is fee for service arrangements with individuals who are paid a percentage of the fees being charged for each person seen.  If the person is practicing under the license of an organization, the individual is more likely considered to be under the control and supervision of the organization.

Mandated health insurance with a combination of sponsored government and private insurance is necessary to prevent bankruptcy of small businesses and individuals due to medical costs. One element of mandated insurance should include catastrophic insurance for those exceptions where regular insurance will not cover.

To a certain degree government has mandated the ability to gain treatment. However, the government has not guaranteed that you will not go bankrupt. This is especially more important because of the number of medical fields that are now selling the debt to third parties, like GE who charge interest on the debt. The transfer of the debt is not base on your ability to pay. The medical establishment gets paid a percent of the bill immediately and closes your account. Affordable health care requires standardization of rates. It also requires the setting of a ceiling of how much any one citizen should pay.

Medicine should be treated on two levels; like a utility service in that rates are set by one entity for all of us; and like an entitlement that government has guaranteed equal access to treatment regardless of an ability to pay.

Solution:

The federal government has specified that 7.5% of a persons adjusted income paid for medical expenses is not deductible on Form 1040 Schedule A. Thereby, setting the standard that anything above 7.5% of a person’s income spent on medical expenses should reduce other liabilities. The other standard the federal government has provided is the creation of the Medical expense flexible spending account with a $5,000 maximum.

Therefore, I would propose that individuals not be held liable for medical expenses, which exceed 7.5% of their adjusted income. Any amount to exceed such should be paid by a portion of a catastrophic health insurance policy that is mandated as a component of health care insurance and then the government as the payee of last resort. However, the cost of the procedures must be set at the government rate for any amount above the 7.5%.