Nonprofit treasury
Reserves, liquidity and the disclosure that says whether you could survive a bad quarter.
Accounting standards require a disclosure of resources available to meet general expenditure within one year. Restricted funds do not count toward it, which is why an organisation with a healthy balance sheet can disclose thin liquidity.
Months of operating reserve is the number a board should watch, and it is measured against unrestricted resources only.
Where everything sits
How to work this page
Restricted funds, board designations and illiquid assets all reduce what is actually available.
Available unrestricted resources divided by monthly operating expense. Three months is a common target and many organisations sit well below it.
Reserves held in a current account lose value. The policy states what may be held and how liquid it must remain.
Money that becomes unrestricted next quarter does not help this quarter, and the timeline shows the difference.
On a phone
Every figure from the desktop appears here, stacked rather than reduced. Tables scroll inside themselves so the page never moves sideways, and figures keep their separators and their alignment at every width.
Questions people actually ask
The board can undesignate them, so they generally count, and the disclosure should state that they are designated. It is a judgement worth documenting.
It depends on revenue volatility. An organisation on multi-year grants needs less than one on annual appeals.