With new laws around minimum wage being debated across the country, along with new regulations around overtime pay under the FSLA, many nonprofits are feeling the budgetary burn and wondering how to cover all of these costs while still supporting programming and staff development.

December and January mark the time when round-up lists of every sort hit the stands – predictions for the year to come, best of 2015, and what to watch for in 2016. As such, business publications have put out their projections for 2016’s business trends, which have implications for both for-profits and nonprofits alike. Below is a brief round-up of some of the big topics anticipated in the corporate world this year, and how nonprofits can integrate these ideas into the workplace:

Nonstop for Nonprofits program subsidizes the cost for
an exclusive training to elevate board leadership

Non-traditional healthcare broker Nonstop and the Center for Nonprofit Management (CNM) have partnered to offer independent sector organizations in Southern California an in-depth training designed to strengthen executive and board leadership.  Through the Nonstop for Nonprofits program, Nonstop has granted $25,000 to CNM to fund the Nonprofit Board Excellence Training – a multi-day workshop that will use collaborative “action-learning” to focus on board leadership and oversight, governance and performance, and financial sustainability and fund development.

Sheri Jones, author of 'Impact & Excellence: Data-Driven Strategies for Aligning Mission, Culture, and Performance in Nonprofit and Government Organizations' and president of Management Resources Company gives Nonstop her advice on how to increase the effectivess of your nonprofit.

Stanford Social Innovation Review’s 10^th Annual Nonprofit Management Institute is taking place September 9^th-11^th in Stanford, CA, with a welcome reception at the Sheraton Palo Alto on the 8th. The conference focuses on executive education for social sectors, and this year’s theme is “Building Resiliency: Yourself, Your Organization, Your Society.”

Increasing healthcare costs, ACA compliance, balancing ever-precarious budgets, retaining valuable staff…midsize nonprofit organizations must consider many factors related to offering and managing group health coverage these days. More than ever, they need a better solution to the dilemma of providing mandated and high-quality employee healthcare while also watching the bottom line. 

While traditional fully-funded healthcare can be expensive and self-funded coverage comes with a significant financial risk, partially self-insuring melds the two into a more affordable health insurance option with less monetary risk.

On July 6, 2015, the Department of Labor (DOL) issued a proposal to more than double the minimum salary level that white-collar workers must be paid to be exempt from overtime, from $23,660 to $50,400 annually (or from $455/week to $970/week).  With a debate centering around if the proposed salary levels are set correctly (and how future increases will be considered), a public forum for written comments is open until September 4th, 2015.  The proposed amounts are at the 40th percentile of weekly earnings for US employees, and apply only to non-exempt employees (e.g. any employee not considered “executive, administrative or professional”). If approved, the Obama administration says that these changes would impact nearly 5 million US workers within the first year.

If your organization sponsors a self-insured plan, you may be on the hook to contribute to the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Research Trust Fund by July 31, 2015. This fee applies to applicable self-insured plans, including health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs) and flexible spending arrangements (FSAs) that don’t qualify as excepted benefits. In addition, employers who provide COBRA coverage and major medical coverage that falls under multiple policies or plans may also be obligated to contribute to PCORI.