Donors want to know where our money goes, and it's our job to show them. The more transparent we are, the more they trust us, and the more they are willing to donate to the RASC!

 

The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada's national office reports annual expenses by type of expenditure. For example, wages are listed as a lump sum and operating costs are assigned to categories such as advertising, occupancy, office expense and so on.
   
However, RASC is a charity and all expenditures support the delivery of our astronomy education, publication and outreach charitable mandate. Our financial statements should identify expenses in terms of program costs to help demonstrate the organization’s investment in its charitable activities. This way, members, donors, funders and volunteers will have an easier time visualizing the cost of programming and need for support.  

Current RASC program areas include the robotic telescope and youth outreach. Committee initiatives (observing, astroimaging, light pollution, etc) can also be defined as program activities. Costs from supporting the work undertaken by Centres across the country can be classified as public outreach. Publication expenses are already tracked, as will expenditures related to serving members and the Society’s national operations.  
 
The organization dedicates staff time and resources to all these areas and pro-rated amounts will be assigned to programs and operations in future reports. This is simply a paper allocation to avoid what can appear to be high administrative costs when salaries, occupancy, office expense etc. are reported as stand-alone expenditures not linked to charitable program delivery.

Centres may also wish to assign operating costs to programming in their financial statements. Although most Centres don’t have employees, there is expenditure related to providing Star Parties, outreach activities or observatory expenses that are all program based. This type of financial presentation helps define the work of the Centre in terms of programming. For Centres with charitable status, this is key to seeking financial support. If the Centre is not a charity, identifying program areas can help in the recruitment of volunteers to serve in the delivery of valuable Centre astronomy activities and services in the community.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if your Centre would like to explore how to present costs in a donor or volunteer friendly format. As always, thank you for your support of RASC!

 

Lisa Di Veto
Fundraising Consultant