Exactly what to do
- Month-end: income, scholarships paid, admin spent, one live ratio per state account (the previewed safe harbor is built on the segregated accounts you already run). Put the number in front of the board quarterly; a drifting ratio caught in June is a budget fix, caught in December it's a crisis. The calculator does the math.
- Run ordinary written acknowledgments now, and expect the §25F layer with 2027: the previewed system has you issuing each donor an IRS-method-generated unique donor number and reporting contributions under it, so credits match real donors without anyone handing you an SSN. One discipline meanwhile: never double-promise the tax treatment, a dollar generates the credit or a deduction, not both.
- Retain board minutes, award and income-verification records, and donor acknowledgments. The working schedule: governing documents, determination letter, and minutes are kept permanently; financial and award records at least seven years (the common nonprofit standard, comfortably past the IRS's usual three-year exam window); income-verification files are access-limited and destroyed when that same written schedule says so, adopt it as a one-page board policy. Federal law requires your 990s and exemption application to be available for public inspection; the income files are the opposite. Public what must be public, private what must be private.
