The Financial Accounting Standards Board has released a series of resources designed to explain its new not-for-profit financial reporting standard and familiarize stakeholders with how to comply with the new standard.
In an e-mail announcing the resources, FASB Chair Russell Golden said the standard requires “improved presentation and disclosures to help not-for-profits provide more relevant information about their resources (and the changes in those resources) to donors, grantors, creditors, and other users.” Those requirements impact five areas of not-for-profit reporting:
- Net asset classes
- Investment return
- Expenses
- Liquidity and availability of resources
- Presentation of operating cash flows
“The major changes really revolve around the net asset classification,” FASB board member Larry Smith told Accounting Today. “We’ll be changing the three net asset classes that we have now, which are unrestricted, temporarily restricted and permanently restricted. We’ll just have two classifications: unrestricted and donor restricted. That will hopefully make things more evident and remove some of the confusion that exists today.”
Read Accounting Today’s summary of the new standard in its entirety.
The resources explaining the new FASB standards include the following:
- Answers to frequently asked questions.
- A video that offers a brief history of the standard and an explanation of how it will improve not-for-profit financial reporting.
- A costs-vs.-benefits comparison of the new standard.
In addition, the FASB will present a live webcast from 1 to 2:15 pm ET on Sept. 13 that will summarize the standard and answer questions from viewers. Get details and register here.