The value of having a CFO in your nonprofit is tremendous. This is the last installment of a series covering the potential benefits, impacts, and value of a nonprofit CFO, so if you’ve missed the previous posts, you can find them here. Today, I want to dive deeper into maximizing impact. More specifically, I want to share how a nonprofit CFO can actually enhance your financial accountability and transparency, which are both vital to your donor relationships and trust within your community. 

Nonprofit Financial Oversight

     What I've often seen is that nonprofits can think it's a good idea to look at financials and believe it's important to know the status of things, but they don’t know what to do when those reports land on the desk of the board or the Executive Director. So, a skilled nonprofit CFO helps ensure that this data is not only presented accurately, but that it serves as actionable guidance in financial decisions about the mission and direction of the organization. 

Internal Controls for Nonprofits of Any Size

     A nonprofit CFO may be creating internal controls or refining the design of existing internal controls in a way that ensures separation of duties. Either way, a nonprofit CFO becomes an integral part of the safeguards in the nonprofit. They may also serve to mitigate risks by implementing reviews and recognizing patterns, detecting fraud much earlier than it would otherwise have been discovered.

     Fraud is a huge risk to nonprofits! In my own West Texas community. there have been over five major cases of fraud in nonprofits, specifically in churches, with total losses exceeding $1,000,000. Therefore, it’s worth noting that the value of a great nonprofit CFO is their leadership in creating environments saturated with safeguards and protections for the nonprofit. 

Transparant Reporting

     A CFO can help you find ways to share your financial results with the people you serve and the donors that have entrusted funds to you to do the mission you're called to do. Through transparent reporting, a CFO can help to ensure that donor trust is kept, maintained and cultivated.

      A nonprofit CFO can also help ensure regulatory compliance is maintained. You want a good name. You want to abide by the requirements that apply to your nonprofit. There can be many rules and regulations and they vary greatly depending on your location. I was on a call recently helping a nonprofit in Pennsylvania, and we did a deep dive into figuring out some of their reporting requirements. Those details are important and compliance with your state requirements is critical. A nonprofit CFO can help you ensure that those reporting requirements are achieved.

Nonprofit CFO Alternatives

     If you're in a place where you can't yet staff that CFO role, I would love to join you in considering how I might serve your nonprofit as a fractional CFO. 

     But, if these fractional services are not yet possible for your organization, I’ve created a new option just for nonprofits like yours. It’s called Your Nonprofit CFO. This low cost monthly subscription will help you gain traction in moving your mission forward and it’s a great fit if you’re not able to hire that fractional work yet but still need ongoing support.

In this monthly subscription you will receive:

•  Exclusive access to a community of leaders 
•  Teaching on topics that are pertinent to where you’re at right now
•  A toolbox of nonprofit financial resources
•  Access to monthly group coaching calls

To receive an exclusive invitation to this new opportunity, you can subscribe to my weekly financial tips here!