Social media can be a grind. For a small nonprofit who likely doesn’t have a dedicated social media manager, let alone a marketing person, trying to create, curate and cultivate content for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest can be hard enough. Add to it that if you’re on social then the expectation is that you are engaging with the community on your posts, answering “customer service” like inquiries in your DMs, reaching out to page managers of other accounts to schedule collaborations, jumping on real-time trends, addressing crisis situations, rotating themes, making sure you’re addressing all your communities, communicating your brand, driving site visits, raising money, the list goes on and on. That doesn’t even include keeping up with all the changes on those platforms or any of the other huge social platforms that are more video driven like YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat or the ever growing crop of new channels — don’t you love it when your CEO says, “My daughter is using Clubhouse and we should be on that to go viral!” And likely after all this, you may still be getting your posts seen by only a handful of people and have only a couple hundred followers.
After a few years of what feels like spinning your wheels, you then were able to convince someone that you need to have a paid media budget. Since all the public social platforms have evolved or continue to evolve towards a pay to play model it means that the cost to acquire a new follower continues to increase. How do you stand out and build awareness beyond your current audience? Often people turn to the idea of working with an influencer with lots of their own followers and clout as a magic salvo. It’s not the end all be all solution, but influencer partnerships can have a huge impact on building awareness, developing your authority and getting you included in social conversations.
You’re not alone. Influencer marketing is expected to be a $15 billion dollar industry by 2022 with 63% of marketers planning to increase their influencer marketing budget in the next year.
But before you jump into any kind of influencer relationship try to work through these questions. Document your answers so that you can hold your organization and the influencer accountable.
Your Strategy – does this tactic align with your overall marketing strategy? How will this ladder into the rest of the work you do? What are the goals and objectives you have for this influencer? Why do influencers make sense for your organization at this point in time? Knowing the answers to these questions will help act as a filter when deciding who to work with.
Your Goals and Expectations – What will success look like? Do you need creative control? Do you expect them to post it on their channels? And which channels matter to you based on the audience? How much content and what formats do you need? Is this a one off arrangement or are you looking for a long-term partner? Will a microinfluencer work for you, someone with a following in the hundreds, but they are all the top tier influential data scientists, or do you need a Billie Eilish to make your mark?
Your Budget – What is the value proposition you can offer to an influencer? Are you looking for them to donate their time? Their reach? How big is your budget? Is it zero? No harm in being honest about. Just means that you will need to focus your influencer outreach with that in mind and look for other ways to provide value to the influencer for their time.
The Influencer’s Goals – What are they looking to get out of this relationship? Ideally they want to work with you because they believe in your impact work, they are served by your organization or they have a direct connection and want to help advance your mission. Do they just want the fee? Are they using this as an opportunity to make amends for one of their past social media fumbles? None of these questions have wrong answers, but the more you know up front the better the outcome of the relationship.
The Results – How will you measure success? What data will you need to get from the influencer or will you need to capture? What ROI are you expecting?
If you can answer these questions you can build a case for investing in an influencer and you’ll be better prepared to find, negotiate and collaborate with any influencer. When you have a solid plan both your organization and the influencer are more likely to create a mutually beneficial experience for you and your new followers.
HelpGood is a social media agency that helps nonprofits, foundations, faith-based and purpose-driven organizations reach, engage and inspire action from key audiences. We are full-service in that we help with research, planning, creative production, implementation, evaluation, and optimization to your goals and objectives.
Mission Statement: The Book Fairies collects reading materials for people in need throughout metropolitan New York. The reading materials foster literacy and academic success, provide a respite from personal struggles, and nurture a love of reading across age groups.
With 1 in 4 New Yorkers’ being identified as illiterate, The Book Fairies seeks to support the literacy efforts and aspirations of our community members most in need of assistance by developing strong community ties and increasing accessibility to reading materials to underprivileged individuals across metropolitan New York. Our services include collecting new and gently loved reading materials from individuals, local schools and community organizations and redistributing them via our Special Needs partnerships, to high-poverty schools and organizations whose lack of materials can stifle the growth of their members. Since 2012, The Book Fairies has donated over 2.7 Million books ranging in age from baby through adult in order to infuse these communities with the necessary reading materials to directly impact their high rates of illiteracy. What Covid-19 has proven, is that BOOKS are ESSENTIAL, especially for those who have been left in the dark without access to books prior to this crisis. In 2020 we distributed over 453,000 books and we will continue to work on leveling the field so access to books is not a barrier to achieving literacy.
About the Once Upon a Read-a-Thon
The Book Fairies ONCE UPON A READ-A-THON 2021, is a unique virtual fundraising event that will allow individuals of all ages to participate, at any level, in a month-long reading event in MAY. In addition to fundraising, we are promoting reading as we invite participants to read for 30 minutes each day of the month, if they would like.
During the month we have amazing guest authors that read their books and answer questions on Facebook live. We also have fun giveaways during the month as well. This year’s event already has about 20 incredible authors – children and adult – who will be participating.
In-kind contributions: donate gift cards or items that we will use for a raffle/auction or offer as prizes to top readers or fundraisers.
Employee engagement: rallying employees to create a fundraising team. The Book Fairies team will help you get started.
I hope we can count on your support to help us reach our $100,000 goal – that means YOU will be an important part of getting 300,000 books into the hands of kids in need this year!
Eileen’s Bio:
Eileen Minogue is the Executive Director of The Book Fairies. She is a professional leader with experience in all aspects of business management, program administration, fund development and volunteer engagement. Eileen brings with her many years of professional experience in both the corporate and nonprofit sectors, most recently having been the Co-founder and Executive Director for Patient AirLift Services (PALS) a growing Long Island organization, building it from her basement to serving individuals both nationwide and internationally. In addition, she has been volunteering her time and talents to a number of other nonprofits for over twenty years including serving on the board of The Massapequa Community Fund, an organization that has provided direct local support since 2001. Eileen states, “I am incredibly humbled and honored to have the opportunity to work alongside so many talented and compassionate individuals and believe my commitment to literacy, the under-served and desire to level the playing field for all, will be a great match with the mission of The Book Fairies”.
Many organizations have seen a significant downturn in their operations due to the pandemic and the money that the federal government has made available to them under the CARES Act has been a significant economic boost to help mitigate these downturns. While the SBA standards for forgiveness of the PPP loans seem fairly straightforward, there can be complications lurking beneath the surface.
Did you spend the funds provided?
Were they expended for allowable purposes during the 8-or 24-week covered period?
Did you retain your staff (or if you didn’t, did you meet one of the numerous safe harbors or exceptions)?
Did you not decrease staff salaries by more than 25%?
How your CARES Act funding interplays with your normal government reimbursement isn’t as clear-cut. In addition, if your organization was lucky enough (or unlucky enough depending on if you are a glass half-empty person) to obtain funding from multiple CARES Act programs, such as HHS or ERTC, how is the best way to utilize each of these sources of funding to maximize your agency’s benefit?
INTERPLAY WITH GOVERNMENT FUNDING:
There has been a lot of murkiness with respect to how the CARES Act funding will be impacted by your other government funding. From the beginning, we, as well as many other accountants and attorneys, have been cautioning providers that CARES Act funding could eventually have significant negative impacts on their reimbursements. While uncertainty still exists, there is a little clarity emerging:
Medicare: Within its Q&A, question 5 addresses how the PPP loan forgiveness impacts Medicare funding. Medicare, in its response, states that SBA loan forgiveness does not offset Medicare expenses unless these amounts are attributable to specific claims such as payments for the uninsured. This provides some positive insight from the federal government that it will treat Medicare (a fee-based program) as mutually exclusive to PPP forgiveness.
Federal Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”): The OMB issued guidance that payroll costs (this would apply to non-payroll costs also) with PPP loans or any other CARES Act programs must also not be charged to current federal awards as it would result in the federal government paying for the same expenditures twice. The federal awards that the OMB is referring to are deficit-funded (cost-based). This makes sense since if a program receives forgiveness for a particular expense, how can that expense be also charged to a deficit-funded contract? This is the “double-dipping” that you may have heard of.
Consolidated Fiscal Report (“CFR”): The instructions for the 2020 CFR requires CARES Act funding to be included in the Federal Grant line (line 79) of CFR-1. This line is considered offsetting revenue for purposes of funding. By treating it as offsetting revenue, it impacts cost-based programs (as expenditures would be reduced) but it has no impact on fee-based programs (as costs incurred don’t matter). This is consistent with the federal guidelines outlined above.
New York State Medicaid: The New York State Department of Health (“DOH”) is yet to issue any guidance with respect to how CARES Act funding will impact Medicaid funding (which is fee-based). We believe that the State is awaiting the budget passing to provide definitive guidance. As this is a fee-based program, we are hoping that the State will take its direction from Medicare on this.
UTILIZATION OF CARES ACT FUNDING:
While there have been many sources of COVID support for nonprofits, such as private grants, FEMA, EIDL, and ESSR funding (schools), the most common three programs are:
PPP Loans: There have been two separate draws of PPP funding, each with its own eligibility requirements. The PPP program covers personnel costs (compensation, health benefits, life insurance, qualified pension, and state and local taxes), rent (property and equipment), utilities (including telephone and Internet), mortgage interest, certain software and cloud-based solutions (payroll processing, sales and billing, accounting, inventory tracking, medical records, CRM, etc.), covered property damage attributable to the 2020 public disturbances, covered supplier costs (pre-COVID contracts), and covered worker protections (PPE, ventilation, increased outdoor space, etc.)
HHS Funding (Provider Relief Funds): These were provided to providers of medical services funded by Medicare and Medicaid. These funds covered both COVID-related expenses (broadly defined) and decreases in revenue attributable to COVID, either in calendar year 2020 versus 2019 or calendar year 2020 compared to budget (which must have been approved and ratified prior to March 26, 2020).
Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC): Similar to PPP, there were two distinct funding rounds with two separate criteria – the 2020 round and the 2021 round. Original regulations prohibited ERTC funding if an organization received PPP funding, but in December 2020, this was changed to allow both at the same time. This has opened the door for organizations to consider retroactive application for ERTC funding. Keep in mind that the 2020 funding is much more restrictive and much smaller than 2021, but it is still something that should be considered (especially for providers with fewer than 100 employees). ERTC funding only covers salary and health benefits.
By understanding what each program funds and how you are funded within your organization (cost- or fee-based), you can start to lay out your analysis of which costs can be covered by the various CARES Act programs in place.
Cost-based reimbursement: The only real options within cost-based/deficit-funded programs is to use CARES Act funding to cover losses. Any amounts charged to cost-based programs in excess of losses will reduce your contractual reimbursement (and in some instances, may impact ongoing funding).
Fee-based programs: Since there is no real offset on fee-based programs (remember DOH has not yet provided guidance surrounding Medicaid funding), you should seek forgiveness for any eligible costs within the fee-based programs. This is the same for non-government-funded programs and fundraising.
Revenue declines: If you had declines in patient service revenue, these can be covered by any HHS funding you received (after HHS funding was used to cover COVID-related expenditures)
Administrative costs: Administrative costs should be allocated to each of your programs using an appropriate allocation methodology (cost based, ratio value, etc.). Administrative costs will be offsetable based upon how the program they are allocated to are funded.
STRATEGIES:
Finally, by understanding which funds are available and which costs you have incurred (or will be incurring), you can start to develop strategies on how to maximize reimbursement:
Maximize non-salary costs on PPP: Since PPP, ERTC, and HHS can all be applied against salaries, you want to maximize the non-personnel costs charged to PPP loans. You can charge up to 40% of non-personnel costs to the PPP loan when seeking forgiveness.
Stagger funding: Consider applying (providing you qualify) for the ERTC before and after your PPP loan is in effect. This will allow you to maximize reimbursement under both programs. If you are applying for ERTC, also consider only applying for funding under fee-based programs (unless you have losses within cost-based programs that won’t be funded under other programs).
Understand what you qualify for: If you will only qualify for the ERTC for the first quarter of 2021 and won’t qualify for the balance of the year, apply for the ERTC for the first quarter and then use the PPP funds after the first quarter is over to maximize benefit (keep in mind cost- versus fee-based programs for the ERTC, as previously discussed).
Communicate with funders: Open up lines of communication with deficit-funded grantors to see if you can extend your grant term to take advantage of CARES Act funding.
The CARES Act funding provides a tremendous benefit to programs, but the rules and regulations can be very complex. Take the time to develop appropriate tools through Excel and documentation to support your cost allocations and expense charges to ensure you properly consider and maximize your benefits. There are significant opportunities for both funding and for mistakes, but if you consider how you are funded, what funding is available, and when that funding is in place, you have the greatest chance of helping your organization through these troubled times.
NONPROFIT CARES ACT UPDATE WEBINAR **AS OF APRIL 6, 2021**
Ken Cerini of Cerini & Associates, LLP discussed:
How forgiveness interplays with your funding streams
With so many resources (HHS, PPP, ERTC, etc.) how they interplay with each other and how they can be effectively deployed
While PPP does not open providers up for a Uniform guidance audit, ERTC, HHS, and other CARES Act related funding could … are you appropriately prepared for these audits and do you understand your responsibilities?
If you received over $2 million in PPP funding, you could be subject to audit
Ken is the Managing Partner of Cerini & Associates, LLP and is the executive responsible for the administration of our not-for-profit and educational provider practice groups. In addition to his extensive audit experience, Ken has been directly involved in providing consulting services for nonprofits and educational facilities of all sizes throughout New York State in such areas as cost reporting, financial analysis, Medicaid compliance, government audit representation, rate maximization, board training, budgeting and forecasting, and more.
