Acronym

Tonight at the Great Ideas conference, the ASAE Foundation launched two products within its Association 990 suite, a database of more than 26,000 tax records of various membership organizations. Nat Bartholomew, CPA, principal at LarsonAllen, LLP, offered a test drive of the database to attendees at tonight's wine and cheese reception to launch Association 990 Key Ratios Interactive Tool and Association 990 Agenda Items. He also explained to me what you should know about this new product.

In case you skimmed above and missed it, the database has tax records of more than 26,000 membership organizations, such as c(3), (c)6, (c)19, and more. Each Form 990 includes information on how much an organization pays its CEO, the number of employees it has, or its invested balance. Within the Association 990 Key Ratios Interactive Tool, users can sort this data and compare their organizations with similar ones and output a report into Excel, PDF, or a Word document. And even if reading financial statements or understanding the data seems overwhelming, there is information within the tool that explains line items and the data that you're researching.

Bartholomew offered up a few scenarios where you could use this information, the most important being a board presentation. For example, in 2008, knowing that other organizations similar to your own were losing money in investments, at a similar rate, may have saved you a headache during a financial presentation. Or, maybe you want to know if you are paying staff members enough and want to make a case for upping salaries. You can sort information and offer some hard data to make your case.

The second product, Association 990 Agenda Items, is a PDF or PowerPoint slide deck of aggregate data from the organizations in the database, something you can use to present with.

Bartholomew says the suite is a great tool for the finance-minded staff members, but I can see some potential in it as an editorial staffer to use as research for articles.

There are two types of subscription to the Association 990 suite: monthly and yearly. There will be new iterations of these products released tonight, as well as some newer functions to look forward to, such as trending data as the database acquires more tax forms from more years (right now it has 2008 and 2009). Yearly subscribers receive each new update, while monthly subscribers will have to renew to get latest versions.

This is just the start of the Association 990 suite. Bartholomew tells me there's more on the horizon, such as generating reports on a refined level, like comparing organizations with interest areas similar to your own. Look for more Association 990 products to be released throughout the year, but in the meantime, let us know what you think.