Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History

(Revised/minor updates in early February, tags added Feb. 4).

This post is, literally, the second (bottom) half of the one I published yesterday, which was about 10,600 words, mostly text not images.   Let’s call this half — well, I just did:

“NATIONAL” Nonprofits? (Centers, Initiatives, etc.) in the USA? No Such Thing. US Treasury’s CAFR explains ‘ENTITY’… [Yesterday’s (Jan. 30, 2022) post, second half]. case-sensitive short-link ends “-dvu”

The one I published yesterday:
“National Nonprofit:  True or False? Wishful Thinking or Flat-Out Deception for USA-Legal domiciled Entities? […publ.Jan.30, 2022] case-sensitive short-link ends “-dgS”

PREVIEW (about 3,000 words).  I have some points to make!

Reading CAFRs (Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports, compiled by governments) at any level help a person comprehend the concept of what is and is not an “entity” and governments’ usage of the word “entity.”

Many nonprofit entities use the word “national” as part of their business name.  That name doesn’t make it magically “national” in any sense of the word.  So many things called “National” are intended to mislead domestic and foreign (i.e., not USA) populations, when such things are even “entities.”

The label “national” is also applied across a number of websites or campaigns masquerading (by implication if not direct claim) as “entities” but which aren’t.  These will also have the word “national” in their names– that is, there will be initial caps followed by a few more adjectives and, if you’re lucky, a noun of some indefinite sort:  center, initiative, coalition, campaign, or almost anything else.

There’s a difference between categories of existence as some entity (government or non-government, i.e., private) and assigned or registered names of entities.

Unfortunately, many government websites facing the consumers (i.e., us) within the USA don’t mention that our country doesn’t do “national” nonprofits or corporations.  Many government websites also inconsistently “mix-and-match” terminology discouraging public identification of what types of organizations (or non-entities, i.e., projects perhaps of some other organization) are meant.

This post leads you to and guides through** how a recent U.S. Treasury CAFR report defines “entity.” (and, much more…).  That section is in the bottom part of this post (below a clear separator):

**by specifying which parts, linking and quoting or summarizing the U.S. Treasury’s explanation of, at this point, the difference in usage between “entity” and “agency” in context (“entity” is a broader term) and listing so many of them by example as to  get the concept.  There are “entities” within “entities” in this case.

Something similar (but not identical) can happen within the nonprofit sphere; for example one Schedule attached to some IRS Forms 990 (for tax-exempt organizations which must file), is Schedule R — Related Organizations and Unrelated Businesses” and asking for these to be identified by categories:”Disregarded, Tax-exempt, Taxable as a partnership, or Taxable as a corporation or trust (Click and scroll down (or go straight to the bottom and scroll up, probably faster) through after Parts I-XII of any tax return (except abbreviated Forms 990EZ), through its “Schedules” to Schedule R and read the sub-headings given.  This example came up  (BiPartisan Policy Center, Inc, FY2019 Tax Return; it’s mentioned below the section on CAFRs on this post).

(“What’s a CAFR?”  Still unsure what that refers to?) Investopedia summarizes, but I disagree (extremely) based on having read enough CAFRs, with one of its summary statements — governments aren’t into hoarding assets.  Oh, really?  I certainly agree with this (second paragraph) — “shouldn’t we be making sure they’re making good use of our money?” and other parts explaining who files CAFRs, and that their MD&A section (and notes) are “important analysis tools.”

“Navigating Government and Nonprofit Financials,” by Jonas Elmerajji, Updated July 27, 2021, Reviewed by Andy Smith).

Governments and nonprofits take our tax and contribution money to provide valuable services—shouldn’t we be making sure that they’re making good use of our money?

…Governmental Reporting

Each year, every governmental organization in the U.S. and Canada puts out a Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR). While the formats and contents can vary, these reports present the financial statements of the governmental entity, as well as important analysis tools like the management’s discussion and analysis (MD&A) and the notes to the financial statements. CAFRs are done according to GAAP and Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) regulations. (See also: What You Need To Know About Financial Statements and Footnotes: Start Reading The Fine Print.)

Too bad one sentence refers to governmental “organizations” and the next, “governmental entity.”  I think the phrase should be “government entity.”  It’s either government, or it’s not.  If it’s “government” that’s not “governmental” — “sort of” government.  Investopedia articles are intended for a general understanding..

CAFRs often present financial information for individual funds (or at least significant funds) as well as governmentwide financial statements that show the position of the government as a whole…. The MD&A is a very useful portion of the CAFR that gives quite a bit of insight into the decisions made by your government’s decision makers. Typically, the MD&A has quite a bit more content than the managerial discussions found in the annual reports of business organizations.

Besides entities called “National” , there are also many “Centers, Initiatives, (etc.)” within registered entities (within governments and, often, universities, or at times, within some other non-profit entity) which aren’t “entities” (‘things,” or distinctly separate from where they are “housed”) at all, but those behind them and involved want the rest of us to think they are.  Many times I’ll find out simply looking for the entity and finding there was (or is) none — the name or label refers instead to some project of another organization (or, government unit).

In the United States, such labeling — “National  [ABC] for/on [Cause XYZ]”  isn’t illegal, just mis-leading and deceptive. It ought to be a ‘red flag’ every single time you see it, unless referring to the federal government itself. It’s a ruse… It’s mimicry — it’s evidence of (someone’s) posing like something it is not.  This word “National” serves to help undeserving entities or non-entities (small or large, powerfully connected or not at all powerfully connected) encroach on other turf, like an invasive species, until the original ones are crowded out, or suppressed JUST enough to keep feeding the parasites.  The “turf” it’s encroaching on is representative government as designated by not just local state constitutions (as to the USA), but under the national one also.  It’s an attempt at nationalizing things which belong under state, NOT national, control.

Because it’s so easy and now commonplace to replicate, ‘clone” or just set up nonprofits, it’s become logistically impossible to track all of them without extreme specialization.  However, they do tend to organize around the “host” functions of governments and can be seen mimicking and feeding off such government sources.

This post begins listing some of my prior published posts naming a series of non-profit entities (mostly) which call themselves National and how they collaborate to form the background, kind of “shadow” government while maintaining private tax-exempt status making their (collective) influence/s harder to discern, and the money much harder to follow.

Some of these are so confident about themselves they self-selected into “The Big Seven“: Wikipedia lists them but says little about them.

I blogged them in July, 2017, (a major deep-dive drill-down on several).  That post is a good background for this one;  background information includes display of many images — both the entities’ self-descriptions, and annotated/captioned screenshots of tax returns. That my blog was so close to top of the Google search results on this phrase might tell you it’s not discussed often enough.

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