Reasonable Efforts Questionnaire

The Form 990 seeks specific disclosures from tax-exempt organizations. Multiple areas of the Form require information on trustees/directors, officers and key employees (a group commonly referred to as “interested persons”). It also seeks information pertaining to those individuals’ family members and business holdings. The Form 990 instructions specify that an annual questionnaire may be used as evidence of an organization’s “reasonable effort” to collect this information.

Clark Nuber and Eve Borenstein* have created a cloud-based Reasonable Efforts Questionnaire to help you meet the criteria used in the IRS’  “reasonable efforts” examples in the Form 990 instructions. This questionnaire is an interactive tool that helps you determine who should receive the questionnaire and creates individualized questionnaires for each recipient, depending on their position with the organization. The questionnaires can be printed or distributed electronically. If the interested person uses the technology (rather than paper), there is a summary report at the end of the process that provides the list of findings for your tax provider.

Click here to see an example Questionnaire.

The Reasonable Efforts Questionnaire is $325 per filing organization. Click here to place an order.

For more information and assistance, please contact us.

* Eve Borenstein is an exempt organizations tax attorney who practices nationally from Harmon, Curran, Spielberg & Eisenberg, LLP (and formerly at BAM Law Office, LLC). She teaches on Form 990 mandates (to CPAs and not-for-profit organizations) from her teaching consultancy, Eve Rose Borenstein, LLC.