Between a bookkeeper and a CFO there is a gap, and in most organizations under ten million dollars the executive director is standing in it.
Transactions are recorded, bills are paid, payroll runs. What is missing is someone who reads what the books are saying and tells the board what it means.
The board financial packet is a printout of two statements, so directors either ask no questions or ask ones nobody can answer in the room. The budget was built by taking last year and adding a percentage. Audit season is a scramble because preparation starts when the auditors arrive. Reserves have never been discussed as a policy. Nobody could say quickly how much of the cash on hand is actually spendable. The finance conversation and the program conversation happen in different meetings, so nobody knows what any program actually costs to deliver.
A CFO costs $100,000 to $200,000+ before benefits, which is not a defensible line for most organizations, so the role goes unfilled and its work distributes itself to people who already have jobs.
I fill the seat, at the level the organization actually needs, which is a few days a month rather than five days a week.
The center of it is the board financial packet, because that document is where financial leadership either happens or does not. A good packet answers the questions a director would think to ask before they ask them: how we are doing against budget and why, what is driving the variance, what our cash and reserve position means in plain language, and what decision the board is being asked to make. It should be readable by a director who is a schoolteacher and useful to one who is a banker.
Around that: a monthly close review, so errors surface within weeks rather than at audit; budget development that starts from what programs actually cost; audit and 990 preparation run on a schedule with owners and dates; a written reserve policy the board has actually adopted; and financial KPI reporting that sits next to the program numbers rather than in a separate universe.
The chart of accounts, the last two audits and management letters, the current packet, the budget process, the close calendar, restricted fund tracking, and the reserve position. Two to three weeks, and it ends with a short written read on what is solid and what is exposed.
The single highest-value change in most organizations. Built once, then produced every cycle, and delivered to the board in advance rather than handed out at the table.
Monthly close review, budget development, audit preparation, 990, and the board finance committee cadence, all on one calendar with named owners, so the year stops arriving as a series of surprises.
The packet each cycle, the close review each month, the budget each year, audit readiness on schedule, and availability to the executive director and the board treasurer for the questions that come up between meetings.
This is not bookkeeping. Accounts payable and receivable, payroll, journal entries, bank reconciliation and grant drawdowns stay with your staff or your bookkeeper, and I would rather help you get that function right than absorb it. I am also not the audit firm's point of contact; your staff holds that relationship and I prepare and review behind it. The boundary is deliberate. An outside CFO who drifts into transaction processing stops doing the thing you hired them for.
Seven years as CFO and COO of a Virginia nonprofit, with clean independent audits every year, and accreditation leadership in the Financial Management domain through Council on Accreditation review. I currently serve as Vice Chair of DuPont Community Credit Union, with fiscal oversight on behalf of more than 100,000 members, and previously as its Treasurer and chair of the asset and liability committee. I have also been a C-level operator in manufacturing and clean energy, which is where you learn what a genuinely disciplined finance function looks like. Most consultants have seen nonprofit finance from across the table. I ran it.
This is the deepest version of the ongoing relationship, and it is the one I take on least often, deliberately. Two organizations at a time, because the work is real hours and a third would come out of the quality of the first two.
Thirty minutes. Bring your last board financial packet if you are willing, and I will tell you what a director can and cannot learn from it.