Annual board calendar

Some board decisions come around every year: the budget, the tax return, insurance, the executive director's review, the annual meeting. When nobody writes them down, they slip, usually until a funder or a late-filing notice asks about them. This calendar puts the whole year on one page, keyed to your own fiscal year, so the board can see what's coming and who is responsible.

Our guide to running board meetings has a short "board's year" table; this template turns it into a plan you fill in. Our compliance calendar tool works out federal and state filing dates for your organization, and the annual compliance checklist lists every filing in detail.

How to fill it in

• Start from your fiscal year. "Month 1" is the first month of your fiscal year. If your year runs January to December, Month 1 is January; if it runs July to June, Month 1 is July. Our guide to the fiscal year and accounting basis explains how to choose.
• Work out the IRS return date. The IRS's due-date table shows Forms 990, 990-EZ and 990-PF due on the 15th day of the 5th month after your year ends. For a December 31 year end, that's May 15. Form 8868 gives an automatic 6-month extension (November 15 for a December year end) if you file it by the original due date, but it can't extend Form 990-N. If a date falls on a weekend or legal holiday, it moves to the next business day. Our first 990 guide explains which form you file.
• Add your state dates. State charity registration renewals, annual reports to the secretary of state and other filings vary by state, and some depend on your fiscal year end or the date you incorporated. Use the compliance calendar tool and check with your state.
• Match your bylaws. Your bylaws may say when the annual meeting is held, when officers are elected and how often the board meets. Put those dates in first.
• Name a person for each item, not just a committee.
• Review it every year at the first meeting of the fiscal year, and update it when anything changes.

Why these items

Many rows come from questions the IRS asks every year on Form 990, Part VI. It asks whether the board got a complete copy of the Form 990 before it was filed (line 11a); whether officers, directors, trustees and key employees were "required to disclose annually interests that could give rise to conflicts" (line 12b); whether the organization had written whistleblower and document retention policies (lines 13 and 14); and whether the process for setting the top executive's pay included "a review and approval by independent persons, comparability data, and contemporaneous substantiation of the deliberation and decision" (line 15a).

The New York Attorney General's guide for directors, Right from the Start, says directors should "make sure there is an ongoing actual to budget comparison with discrepancies explained," and that monthly financial reports prepared for management should be available to the board or its finance and audit committees. That's why every meeting has a financial report.