I have worked with a lot of vendors/consultants/contractors ranging from Copy Machine vendors, phone/wiring vendors,  to accountants, web designers, and more. So I thought I’d write a post about 4 steps I follow when working with vendors.

1. When researching vendors I get multiple quotes to make a comparison of prices and services and always ask for a list of nonprofit specific client references. Then I call the references. A lot of vendors say they work with nonprofits, however I like to verify that they have many nonprofit clients and those clients are happy with their work.

I attended a quickbooks bookkeeping workshop by Karen Schiller at Compasspoint www.compasspoint.org recently, it was very helpful.

Here are some helpful tips that I took away from the workshop:

1. When recording classes in Quickbooks you don’t have to record classes with asset or liability accounts.

2. Membership is a support service defined by the IRS.

3. Administration (or Management and General) expenses include: Bank Charges, Legal Fees, Accounting Fees, General overview of time spend managing the organization, and time spent negotiating govt. contracts.

Since I started working at Aspiration, I have learned about how to blog for my nonprofit and some exciting new things have come about in the last month.

1. Thanks to NTEN www.nten.org I have been able to start a Nonprofit Affinity Group. NonprofitOperations@groups.nten.org This e-mail discussion group is an exciting outlet for me to share Nonprofit Operations tips and participate in nonprofit operations discussions. 

2. I also have also had the opportunity to get more active with the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network (YNPN) www.ynpn.org and post Nonprofit Operations resources to the members only resources section of their website. I just joined their membership committee and took on a new role as list maven.   

I worked as Operations Manager for Low-Income Families’ Empowerment through Education (LIFETIME) for two and a half years.  LIFETIME is a constiuent run organization that helps low-income families pursue their higher education and training goals and graduate out of poverty. 

I was fortunate to be able to speak at Compumentor’s staff meeting http://www.compumentor.org a couple of months ago and share about my experience as an Accidental Techie using their services. Below is my personal experience with Compumentor and their services.

1) Compumentor Tech Support: