Welcome to your daily briefing on nonprofit developments in Alabama. Today we're covering 6 key stories including updates on alabama nonprofit headlines, background & context. Let's dive in.
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Harbor Compliance’s Alabama page presents comprehensive solutions and free resources to help nonprofits manage fundraising, tax exemption, and license renewal compliance tasks.
These resources are directly relevant to AL nonprofit professionals who must juggle ongoing compliance obligations while keeping operations on track.
The Alabama Law Foundation makes annual grants for law-related charitable projects, with a stated goal of supporting the future of law.
AL nonprofit professionals can align legal-service, access, or justice-oriented programs with these Alabama law grants as potential funding opportunities.
USGrants says the federal government has set aside additional grant funding in 2026/2027 for Alabama citizens and permanent residents.
For Alabama nonprofit professionals, this signals possible new funding opportunities that could support local mission-driven programs.
Reach professionals in this market
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Form 990 is required to be made public by the filing organization on request and is indexed by ProPublica and others within weeks of filing. Sections most boards underestimate: Schedule J (top-staff compensation), Schedule L (transactions with interested persons), and Schedule O (narrative explanations that "soften" other answers). Donors and reporters read these.
Items that read fine in management's narrative often read very differently in print. Pre-filing review by a non-finance board member catches optics issues that a CFO will not.
Donor-restricted gifts must be tracked separately and used only for the restricted purpose; using them for general operations — even with intent to "pay back" later — is a fiduciary breach and an audit finding. The most-common fact pattern: cash-flow shortage in operations, restricted-grant balance available, transfer "borrowed" with no formal repayment plan.
State attorneys general have authority over restricted-gift compliance and have pursued individual board members and executives. Auditors are required to disclose restricted-fund violations in the management letter.
The IRS-recommended COI policy requires (1) annual disclosure by all directors and key employees, (2) a process for review of any disclosed conflict, (3) recusal procedures, and (4) documentation in board minutes. Policies that have only the disclosure form without the review and recusal process do not satisfy the recommendation.
A weak COI policy is a Schedule L disclosure waiting to happen, and Schedule L disclosures correlate with future IRS examination selection.
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