Jeffrey S. Siegel summarized recent legislative measures that will impact organizations in Massachusetts, including the Domestic Violence Leave law and the paid sick leave ballot measure.
Typically most nonprofit board members do not have a background in finance and those who do usually come from the for-profit world. This puts nonprofit CFOs in the position of having to explain nonprofit financial statements in terms of revenue/asset restrictions and give context to financial analysis for our sector. Issues often arise with board members having a different understanding of budgeting, cash flows, and revenue timing. Stephanie O’Leary, Senior Consultant at Accounting Management Solutions Inc., gave a presentation about how to get your Board “onboard” with nonprofit financial statements. Her presentation focused on: How we, as CFOs, can train our board members on how nonprofit financial statements work; highlighting some best practices to help board members know how to provide proper financial oversight; and providing necessary tools for board members on how to measure organizational success.
Anita Lichtblau, of Casner and Edwards, gave an overview of the changes in federal regulations known at the Super Circular most likely to affect our members. The Super Circular consolidates and supersedes seven federal circulars. Our members may be most familiar with the A-133 audit circular, the A-122 cost principle circular, and the A-110 grant administrative circular.
As a financial manager, how do you measure success? How does your boss measure your success? Ideally, you and your boss have sat down and established meaningful, measurable, challenging annual goals for you to achieve – however, that doesn’t always happen. HR Consultant Gordon Gottlieb facilitated a discussion on how performance evaluations get played out at different nonprofits, and how to think about setting goals for CFOs, other finance staff and for the rest of the organization. Gordon has many years of experience working as an HR consultant and currently works only with nonprofit and public entity clients.
Although spreadsheets are a CFO’s best friend, the stakeholders of a nonprofit need more than columns of numbers to understand a nonprofit’s financial story. Edward Mulherin, Founder and CEO of e-Cratchit, gave a presentation about innovative approaches to financial storytelling that will keep the attention and interest of your board, institutional funders and other stakeholder audiences. Edward is a CPA and a lawyer with over 30 years of experience in finance and accounting, first as an auditor and then, for the past 15 years, as CEO of e-Cratchit, which provides outsourced CFO and accounting, mainly web-based services, across the country to approximately 60 nonprofit companies. Read More