St. Louis Artworks

“The 990 draft was emailed to all board members for review during a comment period. Each member was requested to respond during that period with either an approval or with additions/corrections. Responses were then summarized and forwarded to the tax preparer for inclusion in the final return.”

“The governing documents, 990's, conflict of interest policy, and financial statements are available upon request at the organization's office. The 990's are available on the Guidestar website.”

“Board members are required to sign annually an affirmation that they have read the conflict of interest policy and will abide by its guidelines. It is included in the orientation meeting for new members. Board members are proscribed from suggesting self-dealing contracts or suggesting contracts from which family members, associates, etc. would profit.”

“A board member reviewed the salaries of executive directors at comparably-sized, programmatically similar not-for-profits in St. Louis and of different types of programs as well. Compensation of executive directors of similar organizations in other cities was reviewed and taken into account also. A Guidestar review was undertaken for objective substantiation.”

“For staff other than the executive director, compensation was based on similar positions in metro area not-for-profits.”

“Pt. VIII, line 8c - There is sometimes a "loss" on this line (event revenue less expenses)due to several things - it's generally difficult to determine the FMV of a ticket to an event (the gross event revenue is on line 8a) and some of the costs of hosting an event - postage, printing, promotion, etc. - don't contribute to the value received by the attendees and so aren't reflected in the ticket FMV. However, if the sponsorships and contributions for the event were included, there would have been a modest amount of net revenue.”

“Pt.XII, line 2a - On a bi-monthly basis an outside CPA reviews the accounting transactions, makes entries as needed in the accounting software, determines that the account balances are correct at the previous month-end, provides compiled financial statements bi-monthly, and acts as a consultant on other business matters from time to time.”

“The finance/executive committee is responsible for the oversight of the auditors' and outside CPA's work and for the selection of them.”

“Line 6 - A small office was rented in 2015 to another entity. The square footage of the office is .58% of the total. Since the majority of the space(99.42%)is related to the organization's exempt purpose and is more than 85% threshhold, the space is considered "substantially all" related to the exempt purpose. Therefore the net rental income is not Unrelated Business Taxable Income subject to 990-T reporting.”