Jen talks about the audit

Whew…. Last week was a whirlwind! I didn’t even have time to blog about my “business trip” to Bonnaroo, where I had the opportunity to see 150 bands over four days on a 700-acre farm in Tennessee with 80,000 other folks. No, really! It was a business trip. I went to Bonnaroo to see how the world’s most successful musical festival works and to bring back ideas to improve our concert.

Sunbaked and jetlagged, I got back to the office in time to make sure all my paperwork was in order for our auditor, Debbie Dobbins, who spent two lovely days here in the office critiquing every invoice, contract, and all my math! (For every job perk at Farm Aid, there’s a price to pay—it’s not all fun!)

But seriously, the audit is a great opportunity for us to make sure that as an organization we’re doing all we can to ensure that our money (your donations) are being put to good use. After our auditor combs through all of my bookkeeping work for the year, we’ll have our finished IRS Form 990 and our financials—valuable tools that we use to explain what we made and where our money went.

All staff participate in pulling out the specific files and information the auditor needs to see. We all have to account for the expenses we’ve had over the past year. As hard as it is to have someone looking at your work so closely its good to know that for every check there is a balance.