Center for Nonprofit Excellence Director leads attendees through ethical and legal compliance standards

 

 

Published February 29, 2024

Melissa Cole, Pensacola State College Foundation

 

Dr. Kylie Henderson guided fifty-five attendees through invaluable training on legal and ethical issues that commonly afflict charitable organizations. After the training attendees had templates and resources to create best practices on essential compliance.

 

Dr. Henderson started the training with an in-depth review of the formation of not-for-profit businesses, touching on important state and IRS requirements, bylaws, and organizational responsibilities before covering the best practices to maintain tax-exemption status.

 

“All of the information presented is interesting, applicable, and practical,” shared Val Bernardo, Human Resources Manager for Blues Angel Music Foundation. “Most of all, I truly appreciate all of the information on best practices.”

 

Attendees covered mergers, acquisitions, asset transfers, and dissolutions with Dr. Henderson before welcoming the day’s panel of legal experts.

 

Amy Bender of Freeman Mathis & Gary, LLP, Glenn Lovett of Clark Partington, John Panyko of Panyko Law Firm, and Amy Piedmont of Litvak Beasley Wilson & Ball, LLP led a lunchtime Q&A session on topics such as sustainable operations, organizational structure, and stakeholder trust.

 

Jackie Gheen of Gheen Consulting praised the legal panel for their wisdom. “The expert panel provided a lot of great insight on board responsibilities and compliance,” she shared. “This information will be instrumental in helping me understand and support my clients’ needs.”

 

After a full day of training, participants split into breakout groups to collaborate on their organizational implementation of learning gains as they worked with their groups on the presentations they will be required to give at the end of the year.

 

“There was an abundance of great information shared during the day,” Dave Murzin, founder and executive director of Florida Innovation Collaborative, commented. “A lot of this information would have been useful when creating our organization. I can see potential revisions that could be made to our bylaws and will also reexamine of our organizational partnerships for fundraising.”