About Bill Levis

If you are interested in nonprofit accountability, financial reporting, and evaluation, chances are good that you are already part of what I imagine as the "Bill Levis fan club." Bill has been working tirelessly on issues of nonprofit financial reporting for nearly 40 years.

He has been the mentor to many of us working in the field. Over the years, Bill has done a lot of thinking about fund-raising costs and about the much-debated questions of fund-raising ratios. Watchdog groups, state attorneys general, and journalists claim that many nonprofits spend an unreasonable amount on fundraising costs. They publish lists which use various financial ratios to compare groups with each other, and they encourage donors to give to the groups with better ratios. Many nonprofit groups charge that these ratios are misleading and unfair. Bill Levis patiently works with people on all sides of this battlefront, and maintains their trust and respect.

Are there better ways of providing information to donors, government regulators, and the public, which will help people judge whether a group is spending a reasonable or unreasonable amount on fund-raising? Or is this a fruitless quest? Over the years, Bill Levis has written a number of fascinating papers which grapple with the theme of fundraising productivity. Until now, however, they were not easy to find. It is great news that Bill with the help of Cliff Landesman, has now published these on the Web.

Bill is a senior consultant with the National Center for Charitable Statistics. Prior to that, he worked at the National Charities Information Bureau and Baruch College of the City University of New York. He was a founding project director for the National Center for Charitable Statistics in the early 1980s. He staffed a model law project on charitable solicitations, and a project on the quality of Form 990 reporting, and has worked with the Federal Government and the State of Tennessee on uniform electronic government grant reporting projects. He manages a process which brings together federal, state, and nonprofit representatives each year to review and revise Form 990.

--- Bio provided by Put Barber, Editor of the Nonprofit FAQ ---