Fort Collins Youth Broadcasting

• We now have over 300 fans on Facebook!
• We now outrank KLIK-AM Jefferson City when you Google “KLIK Radio!” Fun stuff.

KLIK Radio just received a shiny new certificate today certifying that we are exempt from paying sales tax! We are just getting the final paperwork for the city sales tax license exemption going, and we still have to re-locate the Larimer County application on their web site — and we’ll be fully exempt: city, state, and county.

A scan of the certificate is available here!

Yay for sponsors! KLIK Radio has picked up an awesome sponsor, COhomefinder.com. If you’re looking to buy a house in Fort Collins, they’ve got a pretty sweet site setup.

Unfortunately, we spent 80% of their contribution on one month’s rent, but that’s okay.

More sponsorship opportunities are available! We almost had Midnight Munchies, but unfortunately they went out of business just very shortly after their inception. Kudos to their founders for being willing to hear us out, though. If you are a business that wants to see more traffic from young people (16-24), give us a call or e-mail!

In a shocking move, Fort Collins Youth Broadcasting applied for sales tax exemption today from the State of Colorado. Unfortunately, most of our spending is done with out-of-state vendors, since the number of broadcast equipment suppliers in Colorado is, well, slim or non-existent.

Once we receive our certificate from the state, we can then apply for exemption from city and county sales taxes. Being treasurer, I know that we spend very little on sales tax – but it might add up over a few years.

If you are a tax professional, I’d love to speak with you! Our gracious hosts for our upcoming fundrasier, Bas Bleu Theater, have told us that we’ll have to collect sales tax at our event, despite the fact that the entire event is for a charity. If you have any information on this, please feel free to contact me, Jake, at jake@fcyb.org.

This brings me to my next point – our Silence for Sound fundraiser! Peter hasn’t posted any updates lately, but I do know that we already have a few bands on board, and I’m under the impression that Peter has a ton of incredible artwork to put up for auction. Like two years ago, novelty items like massages, catering, and other services may be offered…but no guarantees yet.

If you are a local business, artist, or musician and want to donate something to our organization, please contact Peter at peter@fcyb.org. Most (if not all) donations are tax-deductible! Plus, this year, admission to Silence for Sound will be free! I’m also going to try to convince Peter to allow pizza sales for the hungry 😉

We’re still selling Elitch’s tickets! They’re only $19.99 (or $20), and are available for purchase by visiting http://bit.ly/elitchs. Please remember that cash payments are incredibly difficult for us to accept, since our studio is very rarely staffed. Cash transactions can easily happen at school, though, so talk to your kids to see if they know any KLIK volunteers at school! PayPal payments are easiest, and checks are just fine, too.

Board of director nominations are also happening right now! The ballot already has about 5 to 7 names on it (the exact number is currently eluding me) – so there’s a lot of initiative being taken with our volunteers right now – which is awesome!

Finally!

As I’m sure many of you knew, FCYB had a $10 membership fee in place for a few months. We created the fee as a method to ensure steady income into the organization. As it turns out, though, that stream of income wasn’t so steady as we were hoping.

A few members fell dramatically behind on their payments, some as far behind as 4 months. Further, I don’t think any member ever paid on time (dues were technically due on the third of each month).

My parents always thought membership dues were a good idea. They felt that if people were paying to be a part of an organization, they’d do more to support it since they are actually paying to be a part of it. Clearly they don’t know teenagers very well, because the exact opposite is true. If they pay to be a part of it, they expect to do *nothing* in return. Not saying our volunteers are lazy or anything. They work very hard. 😉

Anyways, point being – the membership dues were just a hassle to maintain in the books and a hassle to get collected and deposited, and it never turned out well for anyone. So from hereon out, for as long as we possibly can, membership dues are terminated!

We obviously encourage those who can continue supporting KLIK Radio to donate whatever they can swing each month. Plus, we speculate that if donations are voluntary, they’ll give a tad bit more 😉

So! End of the drama. Sort of. We still need to sell 34 tickets by the 14th to pay for our insurance bill. So please. Buy some tickets.

KLIK Radio might be getting a facelift! Check it out: http://klikradio.org/new/ – if you like it, feel free to comment on this post or send us an e-mail!

Now that Spring Break is over (don’t pretend it’s not), KLIK is back to work!

First, we are selling Elitches tickets for only $20 dollars! You’ve probably already heard all about this but we are trying to sell as many as possible, if you have any questions contact Jordan at jordan@fcyb.org.

Second we are looking for new Dj’s! If you or anyone you know is the slight bit interesting in becoming a DJ let us know by sending an email to Peter (me) at peter@fcyb.org or Jordan at jordan@fcyb.org. Being a DJ offers you great experience and a voice in a world you can rarely find, the radio world! And it also gives you volunteer hours 🙂

Finally, KLIK is holding a massive fundraiser on June 6th!! As of now the fundraiser will be at Bas Bleu theater in old town, Fort Collins and featuring many local bands including: rat brigade, the Xcentrix and others! The fundraiser is going to be art themed and we will be auctioning off items from local artists Diane Findley and Chris wolf as well as world renowned artist Henri Matisse!

If you have any questions about, art items you would like to donate or would just like to help plan the fundraiser contact me at peter@fcyb.org.

Thanks everyone for your support of KLIK!

– Peter

According to corporations.org, this is it.  With this kind of information in mind, can you let KLIK die?  Donate today! 🙂

Watch out everybody…Jake is creeping out of the northeast and standing on top of his soapbox again.  The title may seem misleading at first, but bear with me.

Since November, KLIK Radio has been using QuickBooks Online Edition to manage our books.  Personally, I think it’s a great piece of software.  It has its drawbacks – for instance, I wish it was easier to manage fixed assets, and it’s a little but cumbersome working with restricted funds, but hey – what can you do?  For a piece of accounting software that was not designed for non-profit accounting and is designed for small, service-based, for-profit businesses…it works well.

The only problem with QuickBooks is the price tag.  In order to manage accounts receivable and accounts payable, you have to upgrade to a paid edition.  The free one doesn’t come with AP or AR.  In fact, even the mid-range edition is too stripped down for what we do, so we have to pay $35/month for the complete edition of QuickBooks Online.  The folks at Intuit are smart.  At $35/month, you’re paying $420/year, which is roughly equal to the cost of buying the desktop QuickBooks software.

Point being…$35/month is a hefty price tag for an organization our size.  We try to get any little possible thing we can donated to us – it all adds up to substantial savings over time.  So I went on a quest to find a nice piece of accounting software, preferably web-based, that was easy-to-use, had fixed asset management, preferably the ability to manage specific funds (i.e. our grants are sometimes equipment-only), and had built-in invoicing.  I was surprised to find what little there was.

Instead, I found several pieces of software that would work together to create a full-fledged (and very powerful) suite of accounting tools.  For instance, FreshBooks can be used with Xero to create an insanely easy invoicing platform and have fixed asset management (kudos to Xero for that capability).  But Xero is based out of New Zealand, and while the accounting concepts are the same…there are subtle differences in user interface and data entry that you just can’t get used to.  Then again, this is a matter of preference.

My entire search for an accounting package stemmed from FreshBooks.  Someday, Peter wants to break back into the musician recording scene, and using the time tracking feature built in to FreshBooks would be an excellent thing.  (On the flip side, QuickBooks also has built-in time tracking).  The difference: FreshBooks provides a user account to every single client, donor, vendor, etc., so that you can see everything about your relationship: how much you owe, past invoices, past purchase orders, etc.  That was the deal closer for me, not the fact that PayPal integration is built right in to FreshBooks.

FreshBooks, Wufoo, PayPal, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, SAM Broadcaster – every piece of technology and software we use to make KLIK happen as some sort of API (application programming interface) so it can be expanded.  FreshBooks had a fairly wide variety of web sites it would work with.  The problem is the cost.

In an ideal world, we’d collect our online Elitch Gardens ticket sales through Wufoo, which has an API interface directly into FreshBooks.  FreshBooks can then bill the donor, collect the money, and record all the transactions automatically in our accounting software.  But…which accounting software?  QuickBooks, Xero, Clarity Accounting…?  Each has its own cost.  But, in any situation, switching to a system based around FreshBooks would generally cost KLIK Radio more than it currently pays for QuickBooks alone.

There would be a few benefits – i.e. the direct PayPal integration (something QuickBooks doesn’t do), the logins and accounts, etc.  Overall, though, switching from QuickBooks to a new system would involve several hours of manual data entry and conversion in addition to excess money that we don’t have.

Simply put…while the whole idea of “talking to each other” and “working together” is a great one, someone needs to come in and clean up the mess that currently exists out there and get everything straightened out into something that can be easily understood.

Why am I talking so much about accounting?  Because KLIK’s account receivables are slower than ever.  If you’re a parent of a volunteer, please make sure that your kids are getting their dues paid on time.  If you’re a general community member, please help us out a little and send us a few dollars.  Or, be on the look-out for KLIK folks in the community selling $20 tickets to Elitch Gardens!

Very important P.S.! The good people at FreshBooks are willing to give us 50% off our purchase if we choose to switch systems, hence why I’m so eager to want to get on board.  If you run a small business or have any need to invoice, I would highly recommend the FreshBooks system.

In efforts to focus more on the sales of tickets to Elitch Gardens and the collection of general donations and advertising sales, we have decided to cancel our Kickstarter project for general funding.

We may, however, create another Kickstarter project in the near future for other special events. Stick around!