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3 metrics to help you soar

It’s November and that means we’re in the home stretch, my friends!

All of you purpose-driven leaders are probably thinking about finishing up the next eight weeks to enjoy a few days of rest and relaxation with family at the end of the year.

What I would LOVE for you to think about during these next two important months in the life cycle of your organization is better understanding the story of your organization through the numbers.

Why? Because greater transparency around your financials leads to a more committed team and engaged community, AND you will be more excited to up-level your org next year.

Three easy metrics to assess financial health:

Like I mentioned, these are super easy insights that you can glean from financial statements that you ALREADY run on a monthly basis. Grab our financial metric calculator here so you don’t have to do an ounce of math!


PS – Does thinking about metrics make you want to simultaneously hide but also get you excited to learn more about how to grow your organization? You may need a finance pro to help get you to the next level. Take our BRAND NEW QUIZ and find out which finance pro you need to make a huge impact on your organization’s growth!

Entrepreneurs: Take your quiz here! >>>

NonProfits: Take your quiz here! >>>

 

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How Nonprofit Transparency = More Donations

I just finished reading Thirst, by Scott Harrison, the founder of Charity: Water. It’s a fabulous book that reads like a novel and tells the story of Scott’s personal journey to creating Charity: Water, and all of the bumps and setbacks he encountered along the way. I drew so many parallels to entrepreneurship among other things, but what I want to talk about today is Scott’s and Charity: Water’s unparalleled transparency.

Charity: Water is famous in the nonprofit space for transparently touting the fact that 100% of their donations go to programs (because they have an amazing group of people called The Well who fund operational overhead). Scott also mentions in his book several instances along the way where wells couldn’t be drilled or wells didn’t work or they had disagreements with major donors, and some might chalk these experiences up to major failures to be handled, then swept under the rug.

But not Charity: Water. They operate in a full disclosure manner and are willing to risk their reputation for the sake of transparency.

And guess what? Not only have they not lost credibility but they’ve actually GAINED credibility with their stakeholders and grown to a $50M+ organization.

So putting it all out there does NOT mean that you will lose donors, and in fact, a recent study found a direct correlation between transparency and increased donations.

The full study by Erica E. Harris and Daniel Neely can be summarized into one sentence:

“…transparency in the nonprofit sector is value-added to key stakeholders.”

Aren’t we, as nonprofits, always looking for ways to add more value to our key stakeholders (donors, board, institutional funders, staff, volunteers, etc)?

Transparency is our solution.

Guidestar, one of the charity watchdog organizations, recently published an article about this study and summed it up with two incredibly strong data points:

  1. donors give more to transparent nonprofits
  2. transparent organizations tend to be stronger organizations across a range of governance, financial, and operational dimensions

I think we can all agree how vital transparency is to our organizations. Our stakeholders need to know what’s going on behind the curtain, the great, the not-so-great, and the ugly, and when they do, they will feel more connected to our organization, our mission, and donations will increase.

But! How do you become more transparent overnight, you ask?

By sharing the right financial information to the right people at the right times! Here’s everything you need to know to increase your transparency, stakeholder engagement, and donations, using financial information you already have!

Download our Transparency Tip Sheet to help you share your financials the RIGHT way, then keep reading! >>

Who to share financial info with? Everyone! Staff, board, donors, volunteers. Financial information about your agency is relevant for all stakeholders. We’ll talk more about what information and how you present it below. What to share? For the sake of understandability, I would recommend sharing different types of information and presentations to different groups of people (using the same set of financials as your base, of course). Board: High-level dashboard – a birds’ eye view – of the quarterly financials and forecasts plus a full balance sheet and income statement for those who want more details Staff: High-level dashboard with highlights that are relevant for them (i.e. share about a new grant or program, or the fundraising results from last month’s gala). The more graphical the presentation, the better!Volunteers/donors/public: High-level and/or public information such as the 990, annual report, and audited financials when to share it?Annually: Annual report, 990, audited financials on website quarterly: Board meetings and staff meetingsMonthly: Board Treasurer and leadership team how do we make the information interesting and readable? PowerPoint. Graphs and charts. Bulleted talking points. Simplicity can be powerful!

Put yourself in your audience’s shoes. Do they know what accrued expenses or current liabilities mean? Probably not. Take five seconds to explain it and you’ll see a lot more head nods than heads buried in smartphones. Again, Excel graphs and charts are your friend. They’re super simple to create and for those of us who don’t get their kicks from black and white spreadsheets full of numbers, they help tell a much richer story of your organization’s financial health.


I encourage you to be transparent about your financials because transparency breeds ownership and ownership breeds engagement and engagement by all stakeholders will take your agency to the next level.

Did you get the Transparency Tip Sheet to implement greater transparency in your organization? Download it here! >>

Want more about TRANSPARENCY? It’s one of my favorite topics and I’ve got you covered here and here.

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Introducing The Purpose-Driven P&L

 

With every step of my entrepreneurial journey, I’ve learned to follow my heart rather than the money or where the market is, despite what some leading business minds might share.

 

I started by my business solely focused on serving nonprofits. It’s what I know and it’s where I spent a decade of my life and it’s where there is a huge need for financial leadership, so it seemed like a natural fit. As time went on, purpose-driven entrepreneurs started making their way into my world. I imagine that they probably saw a bit of alignment in their impact-focused work, regardless of how their financials were structured, so we mutually felt like a good fit.

 

These women (yes, all of my purpose-driven entrepreneur clients are women!) have inspired me this year in growing my own business and I am feeling called to play bigger in this space. I want to serve more purpose-driven entrepreneurs in 2019 – women who are building big businesses, making a big impact, and growing their empire while staying true to themselves, their purposes, and their families, because ultimately that’s what I want too.

 

I want to grow a business beyond myself so that 100 Degrees Consulting can help more purpose-driven leaders realize their potential.

 

That’s why I am so proud and excited to introduce…

 

 

The Purpose-Driven P&L™

 

What is the Purpose-Driven P&L™?

 

The Purpose-Driven P&L™ is a methodology to help purpose-driven leaders better understand and use their financials to make smart decisions for their business AND an impact on the world.

 

It is:

  • A decision-making framework based on the black and white numbers to help you assess which investments will provide the greatest ROI for your business

  • A way to build impact and philanthropy into your business model without sacrificing profit

 

We totally understand that our purpose-driven leaders are busy making an impact and don’t have the time to mess around with clunky Excel sheets and formulas and analyses. So we help you level up your business by creating a partnership with an experienced CFO. In my experience running this business for three years, I find that the greatest transformation is in the first two months of working with a new client. We review and often revamp financial reports to optimize them for greater visibility and profitability. Then after those two months, we have ongoing monthly calls to review your financials and help you lead your business to greater impact and more profit.

 

Now, if you’re a nonprofit and have come to know me as the nonprofit finance gal, I am not abandoning you. After working with nonprofit organizations for years, I’ve built this methodology to serve nonprofits too. I find that many nonprofits operate like a nonprofit, meaning we are immersed in the scarcity mindset and focused on how there’s not enough to go around. I talk about this in my online course for nonprofit leaders, that we need to figure out the impact that we want to have, then build our budget to show the resources we’ll actually need to accomplish that.

 

But the Purpose-Driven P&L™ provides a shift in that mindset. Using this methodology we are focused deeply on making an impact and serving the communities we serve BUT ALSO focused on creating a strong financial foundation to ensure sustainability. Nonprofits with no reserves or looming debt are unlikely to last beyond a few years, and at best will be operating paycheck to paycheck. That’s no way to scale the impact that we can have in this world!

 

So we use the Purpose-Driven P&L™ methodology to ensure we have a solid focus on sustainability by reviewing key financial metrics alongside your programmatic metrics to ensure IMPACT + PROFITABILITY.

 

At the end of the day, this isn’t a huge deviation from how we currently work with our 1:1 clients, both nonprofit and for-profit, but now we have a fun name for it and can talk about it in a way that makes sense to our purpose-driven leaders.

 

This isn’t a sales pitch by any means (stay tuned – ha ha ha!) but if you’re interested in learning more about how one of our CFOs can help you build profitability AND impact in your business, please reach out to grab a slot on my calendar for a chat. We have just a couple openings available for new clients in 2019 and I can promise that having a CFO on board who understands you and your business will be transformational – like, double digit growth, transformational.

 

I never envisioned working with entrepreneurs but I’m so grateful for the opportunity to follow my heart and serve more purpose-driven leaders in this way.

 

I’m ready to share the Purpose-Driven P&L™ with the world in 2019!

 

(Do you want a peek into one of the elements of the Purpose-Driven P&L™ process? Our Financial Statement Workbook shows some of the key metrics that we use to help build financial sustainability and profitability – AND it’s simple enough that you can drop your own numbers in yourself to learn more about your own financial health. Grab it here!)

 

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Five Steps to Closing Your Monthly Books

One question I ask when getting to know a new organization is: What does your monthly close process look like? I often get the answer: What’s that? [Insert wide-eyed emoji here].Many organizations I speak with don’t have an official monthly close process. They generally make sure all the month’s transactions are in the books and then run reports when it’s time for a board meeting. Or maybe they close the books on a quarterly basis instead, again, aligned with a board meeting or quarterly tax payments.While these aren’t necessary red flags, I know that we can do better! Monthly financial reports give you almost real time visibility into your organization, allowing you to be more agile and nimble, and make better decisions in the moment. You remain more organized by getting everything into the books immediately, rather than waiting to make entries months later and deal with messy numbers clean-up later. Finally, your books are going to be much more accurate with real time entry.This is why I work to implement a strong monthly close process for each organization I work with. You don’t need a big accounting team or several extra work days to make this happen.

Check it out.

The basics of a monthly close process: Deadline: 10 business days after the end of the month (Example: November books are to be closed by December 14th – and then no changes to November are allowed) Process & Actions:

1. Enter all expenses

  • Petty cash
  • Credit card
  • Payroll
  • Depreciation
  • In-kind
  • Expense reports

2. Enter all revenue

  • Pledges
  • Cash receipts
  • Donations
  • Sales

3. Reconcile all cash accounts

    • Do your book balances tie with your bank statement balances?

4. Run your reports and analyze

      • Balance sheet – compare last year to this year, check for any major variances. What’s happening to cause the big variances?
      • Income statement – compare last year to this year, check for any major variances. What’s happening to cause the big variances?
      • Budget vs actual – compare month actuals vs. budget and YTD actuals vs. budget
      • General ledger – eyeball the details and make sure all looks correct
      • A/R Aging – what account receivable do you have outstanding? Make another effort to collect!
      • Cash flow – how much cash is in the bank? When does it look like cash is getting low?

5. Bonus points: Forecast the rest of the year

      • After you close each month and review your reports, create a spreadsheet and fill in your projections for cash, revenue, and expenses for each month for the rest of the year.
      • How far off are you from your budget? Do you see any major gaps in revenue or cash? Any months that are heavy in expenses? Why?
      • This exercise will do wonders to help you see around the corner for your business.

Okay, so there were a LOT of finance-y words above that might make you feel overwhelmed. Am I still speaking a foreign language? Does Excel make you cringe? No problem!

Reach out and I’ll walk you through getting your financial house in order, step by step. You WILL become the master of your financial domain!

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How to Track Temp Restricted Net Assets

Temp restricted…what…what?

Today’s as good a day as any to tackle unrestricted vs. temporarily restricted income, both the bane and the lifeblood of so many nonprofits’ existence. Donor restrictions are often the first thing the auditors look at, and often the hardest thing to track accurately and appropriately. What it boils down to is:
  • How you’re tracking and spending your donor-restricted funds
  • How you’re using your cash and whether you have enough to cover all restricted future activity
  • Whether you’re dipping into one restricted pot to cover another while you wait for cash to come in. Or maybe you’re dipping into unrestricted cash to pay for your programs, meaning you’re not charging enough for services.
These are all very important things to consider – donor intent is the lifeblood of your organization! – and if you don’t have a solid system to properly track restricted activity, you may not know the answers to any of the above.

Let’s start with the basics.

Unrestricted income has no donor requirements. We can use it when we want, how we want, for operating expenses or program expenses. We are not necessarily obligated to report on those specific funds. You may also see it called: Without donor restrictions. Temporarily restricted income, on the other hand, is subject to donor imposed stipulations that will be met by the actions of the organization (i.e. programmatic accomplishments) and/or the passage of time. And contrary to what many nonprofit accountants probably wish, temporarily restricted income must be tracked separately from unrestricted income in the books and a schedule must be created offline. You may also see it called: With donor restrictions. When donor-imposed restrictions are met (like the time period has passed or we’ve spent all the money on the designated programs), temporarily restricted net assets are released and reclassified to unrestricted net assets.

How about a few examples?

The Jones Family Foundation gives $10,000 to your organization. Their pledge letter, dated June 1, 2023, states that their gift is for “operational support”. Unrestricted or temporarily restricted? Susan Jones gives $5,000 and the post-it attached to her check says “for 2024 adult education program”. Unrestricted or temporarily restricted? The World Educate Foundation pledges $100,000 over four years – $25,000 in 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026 – but did not specify a project to fund. Unrestricted or temporarily restricted? Did you get all the answers right? Keep reading…

So now that we know what unrestricted and temp restricted funds are, how should we be tracking them? The answer is twofold.

First, the funds need to be marked in your accounting system as unrestricted or temp restricted. That can be accomplished by creating an account code for temp restricted income, or perhaps a class that identifies the type of revenue, then every single income entry must be tagged to the appropriate restriction. (Want to know how to set up your accounting system to track temp restricted net assets? Go to our post here >>>) The second method for tracking is offline in Excel. Your auditor will want to see a temp restricted net assets (TRNA) schedule that shows opening balance of temporarily restricted net assets by program, additions throughout the year, releases (aka how much you spent) throughout the year, and ending balance. This number will flow directly onto your balance sheet of your audited financials so it’s important the numbers tie!

To recap, here are the three steps you need to take to ensure you’re handling temporarily restricted income properly:

  1. Are you identifying income restrictions as they come in? Are you tracking in both the donor database and accounting system?
  2. Are you tagging/coding income restrictions into your books?
  3. Are you preparing a schedule outside of the accounting books on a regular basis (annually at the bare minimum) that shows opening balance, additions, releases, and ending balance, that then flows into our balance sheet?
If you can’t shout YES from the rooftops to any of these questions, then we should talk! We can help you get set up and on the right track so that you, your donors, and your auditors are confident that you’re both tracking and using your funds as intended. Hip hip hooray, TRNA!

Do you want to manage your restricted funding with clarity and ease but don’t know where to start? Are you ready to truly understand your restricted funding picture so you can fundraise more strategically?

I created Master Your Restricted Funding to help you do just that! For $27, you get a Masterclass, a template to track all of your restricted grants and expenses, and I walk you through step-by-step on how to use it. This will help you revolutionize how you’re managing, analyzing, and spending your restricted funds!

Grab it for just $27 here!


More Resources:

Here’s a detailed step-by-step process to tracking temporarily restricted net assets in Quickbooks Online >>> Still feeling stuck? Set up a time to chat with us and see how we might be able to help >>>
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What You Must Know About CFOs

I told someone the other day that I am a CFO and they giggled and asked, “Umm, what’s that?”

So I thought I would explain all of the ins and outs of exactly what a CFO – that’s CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER – is and does.

Don’t know if you need a CFO? Take our Finance Professional Quiz to find out if you need someone filling this CRITICAL role and then keep reading! >>

WHO is a CFO?

Me! I’m a Chief Financial Officer. This means that I’m responsible for everything related to the numbers. Analysis and reporting, budgeting, strategic planning. Many times it also means HR, IT, and administrative operations. A bookkeeper or accountant enters your daily transactions and looks at the past, while your CFO uses that information and helps you look toward the future, or “see around the corner”, to make better decisions for your organization.

HOW do I know if I need one?

Do you know your numbers? Is your profit margin or net income where it should be? Do you have a budget that you use to track revenue and expenses each month? How’s your cash flow?

If you can’t answer each of these questions with absolute certainty based on the black and white numbers, you probably need a CFO.

A CFO will change your business and the way you think about numbers. If she is the only finance person at your organization, aside from a bookkeeper, she will be your second set of eyes on the numbers and will make sure revenue and expenses are categorized accurately, so you have solid financial statements. She’ll look for cost savings and generate efficiencies. Your CFO is basically your numbers fairy godmother.

BUT what if I can’t afford another full-time position?

Totally understandable, and unless your revenues are in the multi-millions, you probably don’t even need a full-time CFO.

So a part-time CFO is your solution. Lucky for you, the freelance workforce is exploding! Oh, and I can help you too. Part-time CFOs are cost effective and offer an outside perspective that delivers invaluable input and insight to strategic decisions.

WHAT can I expect from a part-time, virtual CFO?

The first thing they will do is ask for a ton of information and do a deep dive into your numbers – they’ll need access to the accounting system, recent financial reports, and contact with your CEO and bookkeeper. This will help your CFO understand your business inflows and outflows, and she’ll be able to use this information to help you make strategic decisions down the line.

They may work on an hourly basis or monthly retainer (we at 100 Degrees Consulting prefer retainer!) and will likely prefer to work together for a minimum of three months. You will get the most of your relationship once your CFO has had a chance to understand your business and get to know the team. Plus you’ll get the benefit of a full quarterly analysis.

Take our Finance Professional Quiz to find out if you need someone filling this CRITICAL role in your organization, then get on your way to better decision-making!

So what do you think? Are you in control of your numbers, or is it time to bring in the big guns and get an outsider’s expertise?

 

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Three Critical Financial Metrics You’re Probably Missing

Grab our Financial Metric Calculator Workbook to better understand and communicate your financials, then dive in!

I have a young daughter, and like most parents will say, one of the joys of having a little one is watching them discover new things. It’s almost like you can see their brain neurons developing by the minute. I remember not too long ago when my daughter discovered that her hands can grip things, not just flail around indiscriminately. She was so proud of her new discovery and used it as much as she could (on my hair, the dog’s tail, etc)!

Similarly, the more I review financials from a diverse group of clients, the more insights I discover hidden within the lines of the financial statements. If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you probably know the basics of your balance sheet (cash, receivables, payables, equity) and income statement (revenue, expenses, net profit) and what they mean.

But, dig a little deeper and you will find some hidden insights into your business that can help you make better decisions. (And yes, I am totally giving away my secrets of financial analysis!)

Download our Financial Metric Calculator Workbook to better understand and communicate your financials!

Here are three areas of your financial statements that you’re probably overlooking, but that tell a robust story about your organization.

1. Revenue diversity. Take a look at your revenue detail for this year. If you’re a service business, is over half of your revenue coming from one client? If you’re a nonprofit, is one donor supporting most of your programmatic expenditures? If so, this is a red flag. To ensure the stability of your business, you need a diverse revenue stream so if one source drops off the face of the earth, your operations aren’t in jeopardy.

2. Cash collection time. You probably know, at any given time, how much cash is in your checking account and as long as it’s enough to pay your bills, you probably don’t think twice. But as your organization grows (and we hope it is!), it will become increasingly difficult to meet your expenses if you don’t have a good cash collection process in place. Take a look at your accounts receivable and see what’s outstanding beyond 30, 60, and 90 days. Make some phone calls to collect that cash, regardless of whether you “need” it now or not.

3. Revenue and expense growth. When you run your P&L (also known as your income statement), include last year’s data for comparison. Now take a look at the percentage growth of revenue and the percentage growth of expenses. Which is higher? Are they equal? Your expense growth should not outpace your revenue growth because that means you’re tapping into your equity or reserves to cover those additional expenses. If your revenue growth is higher than your expense growth, congrats! You’re gaining efficiencies as you grow your business.

Next time you run your financial statements (which should be at the end of the month, RIGHT?!), dig a little deeper and see if you can find any hidden insights within those pages of numbers.

Want more metrics and don’t do math? Grab our Financial Metric Calculator Workbook to better understand and communicate your financials!

More insight means you can make better decisions and tell a more robust story about your organization!

#financialmanagement #financials #financialstatements #incomestatement #balancesheet #metrics #financialanalysis #revenue #expense #nonprofitmanagement #nonprofit #smallbusiness #PL #cashmanagement

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Is your organization “teetering on financial peril”?

The Nonprofit Times just released a study of over 219,000 nonprofits and came up with a couple startling conclusions.

1. One in 12 are insolvent already 2. 30% face liquidity issues

In normal people speak, that means 8% of organizations are currently operating in the red and 30% are on the verge. We’re talking spending more than you’re bringing in and not having enough cash to pay your bills.

It seems dramatic but it doesn’t take much to get yourself into this place. A few months of a casual review of your financials combined with not forecasting your cash flow can easily turn a nonprofit upside down.

The results of this study, that a third of organizations are teetering on the brink of financial disaster, is not surprising. Two thirds of those surveyed had operating budgets of less than $1M, and I can almost guarantee that they also didn’t have a CFO or other finance leader on board.

A bookkeeper or accountant simply isn’t tasked with seeing the financial future of the organization. They’re responsible for day-to-day operations, maybe some reporting, but rarely analysis and forecasting.

What these <$1M organizations need is a CFO, a visionary to help them see into the future and avoid insolvency LONG before it happens. And how, might you ask, do we do this?

  1. It starts with strategic planning, setting up a vision for long term accomplishments and success.
  2. Then the next step is a solid budget that puts numbers behind the strategic plan and gives us metrics to track.
  3. We use financial reporting to look at past performance and help make decisions about the future.
  4. Finally, we create cash flow forecasts to see the future and confirm we’ll be able to meet our obligations.

Ensuring financial sustainability isn’t HARD but it takes time and attention that, frankly, you can’t afford not to give.

So what do you think? Is this study unnecessarily dramatic or do you feel less than confident about the sustainability of your organization?

Join the conversation over on Facebook!

 

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Think bigger than your “overhead rate”

Once upon a time, I was a victim. A victim to the nonprofit overhead myth that as much money as possible should go to programs and anything spent on “overhead” or infrastructure was taking education away from the children of Africa.

I walked around with a 75 pound, 3 year old laptop, and every time I would lift it up, the battery would drop out of the bottom. This was especially problematic en route to meetings when I had my materials up on the screen just before presenting. I’d have to pop the battery back in, shift uncomfortably in my seat while the system booted up again and I opened my presentation back up. I eventually duct-taped the battery in which served me well until the entire system died.

Really? A duct taped computer? I wasted hours on that thing instead of just spending the $600 to get a new laptop!

I was a victim of the nonprofit overhead myth.

Which is why I’m thrilled to see this conversation making the rounds again and again.

I recently spoke at The Shift, a nonprofit incubator workshop, where I walked newbie nonprofits through creating a budget and pipeline for revenue and expenses. You can be sure I planted those seeds early that minimal infrastructure does not equal maximum programmatic impact.

I love Nonprofit Quarterly‘s shift in thinking about overhead as Core Mission Support, and I think it all goes back to the scarcity mindset. We feel like an investment in key infrastructure is taking away from programs and that there are limited resources out there for us.

Of course, we must be reasonable and responsible with our precious resources (none of Oprah’s “you get a car, and you get a car!” business) and focus on our impact, but let’s all commit to making a shift in mindset. Budget for what you need to be efficient – enough staff and equipment to run like a well-oiled machine. On the income side, don’t limit your fundraising goals either – instead of thinking “Oh, maybe we could raise $100k this year”, think instead of what you want to accomplish and develop a plan to get there.

The sky’s the limit, my friends! Go forth and invest!

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Seeing around the corner

When I was interviewing for my first CFO role, I had the honor of interviewing with the retired CFO of a Fortune 10 company. I was incredibly nervous and felt so very out of my element – how could I ever stack up to his expectations of a CFO? I ended up getting the job and worked closely with him for several years, almost completely forgetting the anxiety of that first meeting.

One thing I did not forget, however, was his answer to my question: What makes a good CFO? This guy was responsible for the financial health of a major (very successful!) global corporation so if anyone could answer this question, he could. He said:

A good CFO helps the organization see around the corner. This has stuck with me for years. Every time I’m involved in any type of strategic conversation, I imagine myself peering around that metaphorical corner, striving to plan for what’s ahead. Now, I’m no psychic. I don’t have supernatural powers to help me see the future (although, sometimes I think that would be nice – that’s why they say hindsight is 20/20, I suppose). But there are a few practices that can help CFOs lead their organization by seeing around the corner:

Stay Connected. At nonprofits, we wear a lot of hats which can mean CFOs are also doing bookkeeping, HR and IT, plus trying to stay on top of the financials. It can feel nearly impossible to think strategically while you’re completely immersed in the daily operations of the finance department. But to see around the corner, you must stay connected to all parts of the agency. Have lunch with the program staff, meet the development director for a quick update on the annual campaign, go visit a program site and connect with your clients. Staying connected to everyone your organization touches will help you see the big picture of where you are and where you’re going.

Use Your Numbers. We prepare the income statement and balance sheet each month, we explain variances and make adjustments but we’re often only comparing budget to actual, or last year to this year. Two points of comparison don’t often tell a rich enough story. Use your numbers to dig deeper, create 5-year historical analyses and forecast beyond next month. Set aside time on your calendar after each month-end close to dig deep into those Excel spreadsheets and play with your data and I promise you will see farther around that corner than you ever have before.

Be Open to Change. Especially for agencies that have been around for a decade or two, we tend to fall into the same practices, procedures and programs that we’ve always done. When we ask a staffer why we’re doing it that way, they will probably shrug and say, that’s how we’ve always done it. To see around the corner, we have to open our minds to new possibilities. Maybe we need to close an unsuccessful program – take a step back – in order to free up resources to expand another program threefold – take two steps forward. A traditional CFO may try and reallocate resources to make the unsuccessful program better but a seeing-around-the-corner CFO is open to change and can see the bigger picture.

What do you think? How do you see around the corner?Organizations still need help seeing around the corner?

Contact us!