CFO Services
CFO services for nonprofits
Board-ready reporting, functional expense allocation, grant compliance and reserve policy: the finance function between audits, without a full-time CFO.
Nonprofit finance has requirements a commercial business does not: restricted and unrestricted funds tracked separately, expenses allocated across programme, management and fundraising, grant conditions monitored per award, and a board that is legally responsible for oversight but frequently not made up of finance people.
That last point matters more than it sounds. A board can only exercise oversight over reporting it can actually understand.
What we handle
- Monthly or quarterly reporting built for a board, not for an accountant
- Functional expense allocation: a defensible methodology, documented, applied consistently
- Restricted and unrestricted fund tracking, and release from restriction
- Grant compliance monitoring: budget versus actual by award, with conditions tracked
- SEFA preparation through the year for organisations with federal funding
- Reserve policy: how many months of operating reserve, and how to get there
- Cash flow forecasting around grant payment timing, which is rarely convenient
- Audit preparation: schedules, the PBC list and support through the engagement with your independent auditor
- Finance committee and board meeting attendance
- Form 990 preparation support and review
Functional expense allocation is where auditors look first
It drives your Form 990, your programme efficiency ratios, and what funders see when they assess you. It is also the area where methodology is most often undocumented: allocations made by habit, or by whoever set up the chart of accounts years ago.
A documented, rational, consistently applied methodology takes an afternoon to establish and saves an argument every single year.