Equal Justice Works

“The draft form 990 is prepared by an outside accounting firm, then reviewed by equal justice works' management and afterwards, it is reviewed by the audit committee. Lastly, the draft form 990 is provided to all board members prior to filing with the internal revenue service.”

“Equal justice works complies with the internal revenue service's suggested best practices regarding conflict of interest policies applicable to nonprofit and charitable organizations. Each member of the board of directors must review and complete the "annual conflict of interest statement and questionnaire." once completed, members of the board of directors must submit the completed questionnaire to the board of directors. Any potential conflict of interest that may arise is referred to the chair for action.”

“In the past, equal justice works engaged qualified consultants to perform a survey on executive compensation as well as a survey on staff compensation. The executive committee reviewed compensation survey data, where equal justice works was benchmarked against the market utilizing various published salary surveys from 2015. Based on this survey, it was concluded that the executive director's salary was lower than market. As a result, the committee and the board of directors increased the executive director's salary regimen to increase the salary close to market with room to grow.”

“Financial and governance information about equal justice works is disclosed on irs form 990 which is available upon request and is published on the guidestar website.”

“Equal justice works elected to change its fiscal year-end from june 30th to august 31st. The fiscal year-end has shifted to allow management to have greater visibility of equal justice works' revenue results and performance earlier in the fiscal year, which will enhance resource deployment decision-making. The significant decrease in equal justice works' net assets during the reporting period of july 1st to august 31st, 2016 is due primarily to the two month reporting period. As equal justice works has a history of realizing increases to its net assets during a typical twelve-month fiscal year, management anticipates that this will continue to occur following the transition to a new fiscal year (september to august) pending any unusual business circumstances or material external factors. Due to the accounting period changing from june 30th to august 31st, the audited financial statements for equal justice works for fiscal year 2016 reflects activity for the 14 month period from july 1, 2015 to august 31, 2016. The filing of the prior federal form 990 consists of activity from the 2 month period july 1, 2016 to august 31, 2016, which is included in the 14 month period reported in the audited financial statements for fiscal year 2016.”