By trade
Nonprofits
501(c)(3) organizations, foundations, associations and anyone filing a 990.
All industriesWhat this trade deducts
- Program service costs, allocated rather than guessed
- Management and general, kept honestly separate
- Fundraising costs, which donors and raters both read
- Staff compensation, including the parts that need disclosure
- Occupancy, allocated across functions
- Professional fees, including the audit
- Grant-funded expenditures tracked to their restriction
- Insurance, including directors and officers
The part that costs money
Functional allocation is not a formatting exercise
The statement of functional expenses decides what your program ratio looks like, and that ratio is what a funder, a charity rater and a board member all see first. Most organizations allocate by a percentage somebody picked years ago and nobody has revisited. A defensible allocation is based on something — time studies, square footage, headcount — and it holds up when a grantor asks. The other one: unrelated business income is real, it has its own return, and the activities that generate it are rarely the ones organizations expect.
Other trades
- Construction and the trades
- Restaurants and food service
- Property management and real estate
- Dealers and vehicle sales
- Freight, logistics and distribution
- Professional practices
- Retail and wholesale
No limit, threshold or rate appears on these pages, on purpose. Those move every year and a stale number under an accounting firm's name is worse than no number at all. Anything with a date on it lives in the Tax Center, where every entry carries its source and the day we checked it. If your situation needs a figure, call us and we will give you the current one.
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