Some of you may remember an amusement park called Riverview Park, which operated in Chicago from 1904 to 1967.  Although it was before my time, I remember my parents telling me about the fun times they had at Riverview Park riding The Bobs wooden roller coaster or the Pair-O-Chutes.  Although you may not get the same adrenaline rush that you would zipping down the tracks of a roller coaster or slowly rising above the horizon atop a ferris wheel, reading and understanding your organization’s financial statements should be no less “fun.”

If you are a new board member of a not-for-profit organization or a board member who would like to gain a better understanding of your organization’s financial statements, we hope that you can join ORBA’s Not-For-Profit Group for a seminar on July 30 entitled, Understanding Your Financial Statements.

If you attended our last seminar on January 16 – Your Role as a Board Member, which we co-presented with the law firm Chuhak & Tecson – you may recall that as a board member, you have certain fiduciary and financial oversight obligations with respect to your organization, including ensuring that the financial statements and related disclosures are complete and accurate.  Often one of the barriers involved in this responsibility is not understanding financial statements in general and the specifics as they relate to your organization.

At our July 30 program, we will review the basics of not-for-profit financial statements, define the various users of the financial statements and discuss what they are looking for.  We will also show how financial statements can be a useful tool that board members can use to evaluate the financial strength of their organization.

Although financial statements are used to tell a story about historical performance, we will demonstrate how financial statements and overall financial analysis can be used to gauge the progress of an organization towards meeting its financial goals. Presenters will show you how a regular review of financial information can help identify red flags that indicate when an organization may be veering off track, as well as discuss where changes should be made in order to get the organization back on track.  Finally, we will cover financial analysis, including the use of ratios and other metrics, as effective tools that board members and management can use to measure an organization’s performance over time and in relation to its budget, as well as a way to benchmark against peer organizations.

For more information on this topic, we hope you will join us for a ride on July 30, 2013.  Seating is limited.  Register now.