International Journal of Instructional Cases (IJIC)

Email: info@ijicses.com

North Church’s Financial Headache

Miranda Lam, Lisa Chen and Brian P. LeBlanc
Betolon School of Business, Salem State University

Abstract

North church, a medium size Congregational church, struggled with producing meaningful financial reports to its Board of Trustees (BOT) to help them monitor and make important financial decisions at a time of declining revenues and rising expenses. After attending a webinar on church finance, the treasurer and the finance committee decided to update the entire chart of accounts to be consistent with non-for-profit accounting principles. They approached a local state university to recruit an accounting student intern to implement these changes over the summer.

Keywords:Not-for-profit accounting, chart of accounts, Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, financial statements