Russ: This is the PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook. I’m Russ Capper, this week’s guest host, and I’m here with Kristin Ryan, Audit Senior Manager and one of the faces of the PKF Texas employee benefit plan team. Kristin, welcome back to the Playbook.

Kristin: Thank you, Russ. Glad to be here.

Russ: I understand you’re here to tell us about a cool upcoming event.

Kristin: I am. We’re excited to have Monirah Bacnik, founder and CEO of brand28. She’s going to be here on February 6th at our office. We’ve invited clients and prospects to the event, and she’s going to be talking about employee engagement and communication strategies.

Russ: Communication strategies in this era is a little unique; you know, you’re dealing with this multi-generational workforce. It’s probably a challenge, isn’t it?

Continue Reading Seminar Preview: Employee Engagement and Communication Strategies

Many taxpayers make charitable gifts — because they’re generous and they want to save money on their federal tax bills.

a box wrapped in brown paper wrapping with a pink ribbon bow tied on top; image used for a blog post about deductible charitable gifts on a tax return

But with the tax law changes that went into effect a couple years ago and the many rules that apply to charitable deductions, you may no longer get a tax break for your generosity.

Continue Reading Are Charitable Gifts Deductible on Your Tax Return?

According to the Center for Effective Philanthropy, practically all not-for-profits in the United States solicit feedback from their clients when designing programs and services. However, resource constraints — lack of adequate staffing, funding and sophisticated technology — may mean that they don’t collect data as often as they’d like or use it as well as they could.

a woman's hand drawing a green check mark with a green marker next to a box with a smiley face, drawn above a medium smile face and sad face; image used for a blog post about getting feedback for not-for-profits

If you’d like to collect more, and more meaningful, feedback from the beneficiaries of your not-for-profit’s services, here are five suggestions:

Continue Reading 5 Tips for Getting Good Feedback for Your Not-for-Profit

Jen: This is the PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook. I’m Jen Lemanski, and I’m back again with Danielle Supkis Cheek, one of the faces of our fraud and forensics team. Danielle, welcome back to the Playbook.

Danielle: Thank you again for having me.

Jen: So, I’ve heard a little bit about treasury management. What do you do in that space, and what does that look like?

Danielle: Treasury management is just a fancy word for “banking services.” You’ll be able to reach out to your banker and find out what treasury management services they have, but it’s kind of the services that the bank offers you as a business customer typically.

Continue Reading How Treasury Management Can Help Protect Your Business

BioHouston will be honoring women in the community at their 11th annual WISE luncheon at River Oaks Country Club on Friday, January 24, 2020.

BioHouston logo, "Bio" in grey and "Houston" in orange, with tagline "building the life science future"; image used for blog post about WISE Luncheon event

These are the women being honored at the luncheon:

  • Caroline Masiello, Ph.D., Professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, Chemistry, and Biosciences, Rice University
  • Cliona Rooney, Ph.D., Thomas J. Rosenbalm, M.D. Presidential Endowed Chair, Departments of Molecular Virology & Microbiology and Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine
  • Padmanee Sharma, M.D., Ph.D., Professor, Department of Genitourinary Medical Oncology, Division of Cancer Medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
  • Morag Watson, Vice President and Chief Digital Innovation Officer, Digital Innovation Organization, BP

The goal of the luncheon is to provide a place where people can gather to share ideas, tell stories and embrace math and science. BioHouston celebrates the achievements of women leaders in science to inspire others to pursue research and applications, which will influence economic prosperity and improve quality of life for the region and state.

For more information and to register for the WISE luncheon, visit www.biohouston.org.

The Greater Houston Partnership (GHP) is hosting its annual meeting for members on January 22, 2020 at the Hilton Americas.

man speaking at a podium in a conference hall full of people for GHP's annual meeting in 2019

GHP’s outgoing chair, Scott McClelland, President of H-E-B Food and Drug, will recap and reminisce on the organization’s work in 2019 before passing the torch to incoming chair, Bobby Tudor, Chairman, Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. LLC.

Tudor will be joined by GHP’s President and CEO, Bob Harvey, as they look ahead on executing Houston Next, the GHP’s plan focused on building a strong, diverse economy, ensuring a great quality of life and supporting opportunity for all Houstonians. In addition, Tudor will also address Houston’s position in the global energy transition.

For more information and to register, visit www.houston.org.

A not-for-profit capital campaign aims to raise a specific — usually, a significant — amount of money over a limited time period. Your not-for-profit may undertake a capital campaign to acquire land, buy a new facility, expand an existing facility, purchase major equipment or seed an endowment.

various arms extended to the center of the photo, with overlapping hands formed into a teamwork cheer; image used for a blog about executing a not-for-profit capital campaign

Whatever your goal, a capital campaign can be grueling, so you need to ensure stakeholders are on board and ready to do what it takes to reach it.

Continue Reading How to Execute Your Not-for-Profit’s Capital Campaign

The IRS announced it is opening the 2019 individual income tax return filing season on January 27. Even if you typically don’t file until much closer to the April 15 deadline (or you file for an extension), consider filing as soon as you can this year.

a black-ink pen lying next to tax withholding forms for a tax return

The reason: You can potentially protect yourself from tax identity theft — and you may obtain other benefits, too.

Continue Reading Protect Yourself by Filing Your 2019 Tax Return Early

Jen: This is the PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook. I’m Jen Lemanski, and I’m back again with Danielle Supkis Cheek, a director and one of the faces of our data analytics team. Danielle, welcome back the Playbook.

Danielle: Thank you again.

Jen: So, in this era of technology, and I mentioned in the intro—data analytics. One of the pieces that is data visualization. What are you seeing in that space, and how do you work with clients on that?

Danielle: Yeah, so, data visualization is what sounds like a scary term—people don’t really exactly know what it is—it pretty much is a fancy word for “pictures of graphs.” Just summering up data in a graph or a picture of some sort. A lot of people still seem to be very afraid to start, very afraid of, “What do I need to invest?” and afraid of, “What do I need to do?”

Continue Reading What is Data Visualization and How to Get Started