Staff Post
By Anna Mathew

The proclamation of the new Ontario Not-for-Profit Corporations Act (ONCA) has been delayed. No official date has been set, but it will not be proclaimed prior to January 1, 2014.

Visit the Ontario Nonprofit Network website for more information on the delay and other ongoing developments with ONCA.

Staff Post
By Anna Mathew

Young Associates founder and principal associate has been named one of the four faces of innovation in Canada by Metro News. The article profiles four innovative Canadians, praising Heather for her pioneering work in developing sound financial management best practices in the Canadian arts sector.

At first, Heather Young didn’t know much more about arts administration than the students she taught at Humber College in Toronto 20 years ago.

But what she quickly learned in trying to teach sound fundamentals of arts management was that hard information on the topic was difficult to muster — let alone make available to budding artists and art groups. As good innovators often do, she saw a need and filled it.

Young crafted her own materials, including Finance for the Arts in Canada, a textbook and reference guide to aid in running an arts organization. Her company, Young Associates — with a staff of 12 — now serves as a financial management resource for 90 Toronto companies. She’s soaked in years of knowledge working with arts groups in the city — something she believes is essential for innovation.

“Get to know your subject area as intimately as you possibly can,” she said. “You need to know the upsides and downsides of what you’re working on … and in particular the gaps in the available supports.”

Congratulations Heather!

Click here to read the full article.

Staff Post
By Anna Mathew

Sage, the makers of Simply Accounting, have announced several brand changes, including a new naming structure for their products.

What’s changing?

From the Sage website:

In 2012 the names of many of our core accounting and ERP lines, including those designed for nonprofits and the construction industry, are changing. These products will be identified with a numbering approach where higher numbers denote increasing levels of product capability or sophistication. Our product numbering sets include Sage One, Sage 50, Sage 100, Sage 300, and Sage 500.

However, these changes are more than in name alone. Each product family will offer integration to common business solutions such as CRM, Fixed Assets, HRMS, and Payroll. Sage Connected Services provide additional capabilities, including online payment processing, mobile access, and data security, while product support through Sage Business Care and Sage Advisor technology ensure you get the most from your Sage investment.

You can read more at the new Sage website.

Staff Post
by Anna Mathew

Our Principal, Heather Young, is one of three speakers slated for a February 29, 2012 workshop entitled Financial Management: Building a Strong Bottom Line. Along with consultant Jessa Agilo-Copeland and General Manager Kendra Fry, Heather will help participants from the arts sector increase their financial literacy, with tips for understanding finances, hands on techniques for dealing with private and earned revenue, donor cultivation, deficit reduction, recovery from financial collapse and balancing artistic choices vs. management choices. Using real case studies, the speakers will walk participants through financial statements and assist them in analysing the financial health of an organization so that they walk away from the workshop with practical tools to implement in their daily work.

This professional development workshop is part 2 of a 4 part series generously funded by the Ontario Arts Council, and offered by the Canadian Dance Assembly (CDA) in partnership with the Dancer Transition Resource Centre (DTRC), the Dance Umbrella of Ontario (DUO) and the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (PACT) – with the support of, Creative Trust and CCI – Ontario Presenting Network.

Visit the Young Associates PD calendar or this page on the CDA website for more information on the series and how to register.

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Staff Post
by Anna Mathew

Creative Trust is a collaborative capacity building organization that helps Toronto’s mid-size and small performing arts companies develop skills and achieve financial health and balance. We’ve enjoyed working with them for a while now – Heather Young, Principal, is their Finance Manager.

These folks are leaders in the Toronto arts management scene. They have seen it all! That’s why we are absolutely thrilled here at Young Associates that Creative Trust featured us in a blog post titled Finances matter, cheering “the launch of a made-in-Canada website on financial matters and management in the arts” and daring anyone “to try to find anything as useful and interesting on the topic from anywhere else in the world.”

We’re blushing!

Thanks to Jini and the folks at Creative Trust for their stamp of approval. The Young Associates website is a work in progress and we could not be more excited about it. We promise we are working hard to get more content ready. Stay tuned for answers to FAQs, more tip sheets, more curated news, and a library of useful and relevant articles from around the Web. Join us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus if you would like to help spread the word about our free resources.

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