An NGO's books aren't built around sales at all — they're built around grants, restricted funds and accountability to a donor rather than a shareholder. Here's how Twafwane Community Development Foundation handles it.
Most of our reference companies are commercial businesses — but not every organisation that needs solid books is one. Twafwane Community Development Foundation, one of our eighteen fictional reference companies, is our first genuinely non-commercial example: no sales, no share capital, and a set of books built around grants instead.
Where the complexity actually is
Twafwane's debtors are donor receivables — five separate grant tranches, two of them in US dollars, sitting on a dedicated USD control alongside a USD donor bank account with its own statement to reconcile. Deferred grant income, money received against work not yet delivered, is Twafwane's biggest liability, alongside sub-partner advances and grants still payable to implementing partners. Its equity isn't share capital at all — it's fund accounting: an unrestricted general fund, a restricted capital fund, and accumulated surplus, each tracked separately because donor money often comes with conditions on how it can be used. A small programme-supplies store, a fully-depreciated Hilux still on the register, and VAT applying only to training-centre hire round out a very different kind of business.
Fully onboarded, and transacting
Twafwane went through the same review and sign-off workflow described in our opening balances post, and has carried on since with a real invoice and payment cycle for its programme income, a real purchase order, supplier bill and payment for its overheads, and — because two of its grant tranches are dollar-denominated — a month-end exchange rate revaluation that, in the reference month, posted a gain of just under ZMW 97,000 as the Kwacha moved in the Foundation's favour against the dollar.
Get in touch if an NGO or donor-funded programme's books are closer to your own organisation than a commercial business.
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