CharityWatch currently has concerns about this organization and/or is unable to provide complete rating information due to the organization's nondisclosure of financial information. Please see the Analysts' Notes section for a more detailed explanation.
CharityWatch is unable to provide a range of Top Three Salaries for this charity for the above fiscal reporting year because we lack complete salary data for the organization. Except for officers, directors, and trustees, the IRS does not require breakouts of salaries totaling less than $100,000.
For example, XYZ charity would be required to provide a breakout in its tax form of compensation to its president of $55,000, but would not be required to provide a breakout of $99,000 in compensation to its top medical researcher if that person is not also an officer, director, or trustee of the organization.
This charity reports that compensation to its officers, directors, and trustees is under $100,000 per individual. Donors who would like to view limited salary data for this organization should refer to its tax form, which may be available on the charity's web site or from a number of third-party sources. See CharityWatch's Links page for information on obtaining copies of charity tax forms.
CharityWatch is unable to provide a letter grade rating of The Kindness Ranch Animal Sanctuary (Kindness Ranch) for its financial year 2023 because the charity reports that it did not have an audit of its finances conducted by an independent Certified Public Accountant (CPA) for that year. In addition, CharityWatch has concerns about the charity's governance. For these reasons, CharityWatch has assigned Kindness Ranch a "?" rating for its fiscal year 2023. Kindness Ranch reports in its IRS tax Form 990 that it raised just over $1.9 million in contributions in 2023. It is unusual for a charity of this size to not have an independent audit of its finances conducted each year. An audit is based on Generally Accepted Auditing Standards (GAAS) and includes inspecting a charity’s assets and examining its accounting records, including source documents (e.g., invoices, purchase orders, expense reports, credit memos, cancelled checks), journal entries, and ledgers (the aggregate set of records containing all of a charity’s accounts). Before expressing an opinion on a charity’s financial health and conformity (or nonconformity) with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), an independent CPA conducts analytical procedures to identify possible problems with its financial records and investigates them. Analytical procedures may include comparing different sets of operational and financial information, reviewing the consistency of historical relationships, and examining trends in financial ratios to identify any unexplained variances. Most large charities that solicit donations nationally are required to file annually in 41 jurisdictions (40 states plus Washington D.C.) as a condition of being allowed to raise funds within these states' borders. About half of those jurisdictions require charities of Kindness Ranch's size to also submit audited financial statements each year. Because charities are not required to disclose in their federal IRS tax Form 990 all the states in which they solicit donations, CharityWatch is unable to determine if Kindness ranch is in compliance with state solicitation regulations. In its tax filing Kindness Ranch reports that the only two states in which it is required to file a copy of its IRS Form 990 are Wyoming and Colorado. When CharityWatch searched for Kindness Ranch's charity filing in the Colorado Secretary of State's online database, it returned no results. CharityWatch has significant concerns about the charity's governance. According to its 2023 tax filing, Kindness ranch has a governing body consisting of only four members. CharityWatch recommends that charities maintain boards consisting of a minimum of at least five members, the majority of which should be considered independent according to IRS standards. (IRS Form 990, Part VI, Section A, lines 1a & 1b) Kindness Ranch also reports that it does not monitor or maintain a written conflict of interest policy and that it does not have a whistleblower or a document destruction and retention policy. The lack of these basic policies are of particular concern given the small size of charity's board. In its 2023 tax filing Kindness Ranch reports that its top three expenses consisted of "Other salaries and wages" of $529,696, all of which are reported as a program expense; "Insurance" of $245,488, all of which is reported as a program expense; and "All other expenses" of $456,463, of which $404,570 is reported as a program expense and $51,893 is reported as overhead. The charity reported "veterinarian fees" totaling $101,961 as a program expense. Included in reported fundraising expenses is $340,561 of "Direct mailings [with postage]; and $100,811 of "projects expense." |