Name: Restricting to Expand: How Sharpening Your Vision Fuels Stratospheric Growth
Uploaded: 2025-08-12T18:31:29.117Z
Duration: 58 min 40 s
Description: Restricting to Expand: How Sharpening Your Vision Fuels Stratospheric Growth

Transcript for "Restricting to Expand: How Sharpening Your Vision Fuels Stratospheric Growth": Hi, everybody. Welcome to today's webinar. We're gonna do another session in our ultimate CFO series. This one on the idea of restricting to expand, which we're excited to talk about, and thank you everybody for joining us. I'm gonna go through a few housekeeping items quickly. For those of you that are regulars, I see a few of you. Thank you for bearing with my spiel. Some of you can probably do it from memory at this point. We use a platform called Goldcast to broadcast webinars here at Blackbaud, so you should be able to see Andrew and myself and hear us, using your screen and speakers. If you run into any issues, refresh your browser. That will normally do the trick. You can also use chat to let me or other attendees know, if you're having any issues and need help, and you can chat with us and each other there as well. I do wanna call out in the docs tab, you should see a link to the PDF for today's slides if you'd like to download that to take notes. I also have a link to a session on internal controls. It's part two of two. And on that landing page, you can listen to the on demand session that we did last week. But we're gonna be talking about internal control systems and creating a culture of internal controls in that webinar. I've also got some links for product tours for financial edge and XT, and I'll link to Andrew's website in there as well. So, get in there and make sure you download and bookmark stuff. Lastly, I'll go through this a little bit more in a minute, but if you are here, also hoping to get a CPE certificate or credit for today, I'll talk you through how to use the polls for that. They're not currently live in the engagement tab because we don't have a poll open, but you'll see those pop up on the right hand side of your screen as well. Okay. I wanted to let everybody know we do have someone from our sales team on the line today. Hi, Lauren. She's here to answer sales specific questions. So if you have any and you wanna chat with someone, she is the quickest way to get information specific to your organization. You can normally book a meeting with them pretty quickly. There's a link in the docs tab to do so. Just a quick fifteen minute discussion. If you have questions about pricing or how to set up a demo, anything like that, Lauren is a good first place for that. And if you are a current customer and have any questions, I've dropped a link here for you to bookmark to chat as well as, the phone line. Alright. Last thing for me, and I'll kick it over to Andrew. If you are hoping to get a CPE credit, again, most of you know this, and it it's standard on all the sessions, but just make sure you stay on the full time. I do check that, and which we normally use the full time, so that should not be a challenge. And, respond to all three polling questions. We'll have three today. Andrew and I'll cue you when those pop up. And if you run into any issues answering them within the platform, just let me know either by message or chat, and I'll write your name down. And if you want to write this email address down, I monitor it. If you have any questions about your certificate, you're welcome to email me as well. Alright. Andrew, thank you for joining us again, especially with the arrival of your your second imminent. We appreciate your time. So I'll go ahead and let you introduce yourself for the folks that don't know you, and we'll get going. Oh, Andrea, I can't hear you right now. How about now? Yep. Gotcha. Alright. Thank you, Sarah. And thank you everybody for taking the time, today to kinda join us and kinda learn more about kind of what I'm calling restricting to expand. And I know a lot of nonprofits, especially now, you've either just budgeted at 06:30 or you're about to start budgeting for 12:31, the majority of you, and thinking about kinda how to go about it with funding changes, and we'll get into some strategies and some things to think about and things I've seen. A little bit about me. So I'm a CPA, currently the director of finance at Fifth Avenue Committee, which is an affordable housing nonprofit. I'm also the founder and partner of Innovate for Good, which is really just how do we bring efficiencies to nonprofit finance groups, especially utilizing the tools you have already and getting the most out of them to not have to make new investments and figure out how to make them work. I've been in the nonprofit space for about fifteen years, both public and private. So kinda have seen most of it. I can't say I've seen everything because every client I bring on has a new thing that I've never seen before. But I've seen a lot and, unfortunately, today, you get the fourth best harrow if you include the dog. As Sarah said, if I run out of here mid presentation, it means the fifth best harrow is on the way, the the next one. So, but I appreciate everybody joining me today. So what are we gonna do today? Really, it's talking about, at today's junction as a nonprofit, thinking about how where to go from here. Either you've had I've seen in the chat, either you have funding cuts. Some some people said their donors have stepped up, but we're all kinda living in this great unknown, not knowing what's gonna happen tomorrow. I can tell you at my organization, we finalized our budget with cuts. The next day, we found out a grant got reinstated, and we didn't need some of those cuts. So really thinking about how to prepare yourself for kind of this volatility. And a big thing I've been talking about and talking to a lot of clients about is really this, how do we prepare ourselves for what's coming, but also not ruin the organization and allow ourselves to grow? And some of that is, it's how do we restrict ourselves? We're gonna talk a little bit how restriction can actually fuel that growth and that expansion of your nonprofit's mission. Really getting back to that central purpose, what drives the organization? When you ask your stakeholders, what does this organization do? It really gets down to the the core part of your mission. And then it we're gonna get into some tips, some ways to think about some of that resource allocation, building that budget, and then really how you can focus on that growth and how to go about kind of sourcing those opportunities, thinking about where your organization should do and should not do. Just because you can, especially in today's environment, doesn't mean you should. And maybe there are better organizations out there to do it, and we'll talk about some of those things. Alright. So really why I think and I a lot of the nonprofits I'm talking to really think restriction is the way to go right now, and it's also gonna fuel growth. And I'm not saying anything out of turn. Nothing no one no one doesn't know on this call. The nonprofit space right now is at a crossroads, and it's not an easy space to be in. Every day brings something, different. And as an organization, thinking about that restriction, it's hard. I've I talked to an executive director. I'm like, what is your core program? And literally, the answer I got was, well, I can't choose my favorite child. And while I understand that, and it's hard because when you talk about as a nonprofit restricting, you're helping less people. You're focusing your mission. It's not gonna hit as many people. But the general idea of this restriction is really to allow the organization to have that strong foundation and then be able to grow when the op the right opportunities present themselves. So while there might be short term hits into some of the things we're talking about and there's gonna be cuts, there's gonna be hard decisions, it's really about driving that foundation and solidifying everything you're doing at the core of your mission so that when the opportunities arise, you can grow and you're not stretched thin. And when you see needs in the community, in the, individuals you serve, you can really jump and and adapt. So and I know a lot of nonprofits are ever constantly in this expansion mode. You know what? A funding opportunity comes up for something we don't do that we can help our population. Let's apply and figure it out later. I talked to a lot to do that. And really, I think that stretches a team thin and especially in today's environment, it can lead to a stray from focus. So it's really and there's pressure. There's pressure when you're in the community and you see a need, especially some of the nonprofit people, those program people, those people that are really mission driven. They're out in the communities. They're out helping these people. When they say a see a need, they wanna fill it, and they wanna help. And it's really this pressure to do everything we can for our stakeholders, so the people who rely on us. And while that is altruistic, it's a great way to think. I think sometimes it hamstring a lot of our organizations and a lot of these nonprofits because you're trying to do too much. It's the same thing from a business side. It's that that scope creep I always I always hear I heard when I was in public accounting. It's stay to what you're there to do because you're gonna be able to focus better. And sometimes when you're not trying to do 12 things, when you try to do 12 things, you're gonna do a b b plus across the board. But if you can focus on those one or two things, you can really deliver that a plus plus quality program, support, incentives to your stakeholders, to the individuals you're serving, and really, they're gonna benefit more. And it's also gonna be a benefit for your employees, the people you have in the field. If you can focus what they're doing, it's gonna take some of that burden that they hold every day off of them. And they're gonna they're gonna be able to breathe a little bit and think a little more. And it's embracing those constraints, knowing what you can and can't do. I always said, when I think about even my own step, when I think about what their schedules are and what they have to do, I always think about, okay, we have so many hours a week. This is gonna take four hours. It's gonna take eight hours. It's gonna take six hours. I always schedule people at 80%. And I I can tell you when I was in public accounting that there was a lot of pushback from that because you wanna be a 100% scheduled, but my thinking is things are always gonna come up. And if you schedule somebody a 100% and an emergency comes up, then you're not even getting done your day to day task. But if you leave that buffer in somebody's schedule, in somebody's job description for those emergencies, for those things that come up, you're gonna allow them to better be more agile and better meet the moment better because they're gonna have time to think and do other things rather than be already being stretched thin and throwing more things on their plate. So those are just some of the things to think about how this kind of shifts to focus can really narrow home and not only help your constituents, but help your employees. And this is then then you avoid burnout. You avoid that turnover and just thinking about what where really do we wanna be in that community. And I think a big part of that is getting back to at all our nonprofits, what is our mission? What are we here to do? And there's many ways to figure that out. I think a lot of nonprofits, you read that mission statement in either financial statements or your nine ninety, and a lot of them are vague because we wanna help our community. But really, what are those maybe we have eight programs because you know what? In the past ten years, funding's been good. We've we've gotten a lot of grants. We've gotten a lot of donations. We're able to kind of expand and and do other things. But when people think about your organization, what do they think you do? Where do people come to you for? And versus what are you outreaching and trying to find people to help? Thinking about you have those dedicated donors you can rely on. What do they value? What do they wanna see the organization do? Because where we see all this uncertainty, if we can keep the people who we can rely on happy, I think to me that's important because then we can be out there chasing what we need to do. And, really, what is that lifeblood of the organization? What keeps them running? What do our participants, the people we serve, the the individuals that we help? What do they truly need from us? And what can we supply the best? Because there's so many organizations out there, and I think sometimes nonprofits try to do everything rather than finding organizations that might be able to do something a little better because they're more specialized. So thinking about how do we focus our mission and some of this some of this comes into, let's talk to our stakeholders, let's talk to our employees. What drives them? What keeps them there? Unfortunately, no one worked at a nonprofit because the salary is really high, and that's why they well, that's why they're there. Most people at a nonprofit are really mission driven. They're there to help people, so let's find out what they are doing. Because it's a lot different from me sitting at a CFO suite saying, this is what the organization does, then the person that is in one of our tenant houses knocking on doors doing advocacy. They know what the people need. And really getting back to that mission, I think, is reconnecting with not only the people you serve, but your employees that are on on the ground floor. And I think a lot of this, I've I've found in my career when you have more focus, it does build more creativity, more momentum. Having those when you're more focused, usually, as I say, you end up maybe doing a little bit less. I won't say a lot because nonprofit, everybody's always stretched thin, but you end up doing a little less and sometimes there's that time for just thinking and brainstorming. You can stop and think about how you can do things differently. And maybe, you know what, I was talking to somebody just because we had fifteen minutes to breathe on the subway, and we're like, maybe we could try this with our with our program or this. That sometimes it can lead to just changes and better ideas and really drive that innovation. It gives people time to reflect and report and figure out what works and what doesn't. And I think when you have that creativity and allow people to kind of drive and grow and build, you're gonna get more buy in and you're just gonna build momentum. People are gonna be reinvigorated, and they're not gonna feel so defeated. It's very easy to nonprofit. I know it. I see it every day, and sometimes I feel it. You just feel defeated. Every day, something else is coming. Every day, there's somebody we can't help. But, really, how can we get back to those basics and really drive the mission that we're there to do to really help individuals, I think is the key. And I think when I sit in a CFO chair and think about this, this whole thing we're talking about, this focus, this mission oriented driving can really bring about operational efficiency whereas a as a finance person, as an accountant, that's where I get excited. I love the mission. I love helping people, but I'm a nerd. I wanna see I wanna see operational efficiency. I wanna see better reporting. That's why I'm here. And I think when when you think about concentrating that mission, it really allows you to concentrate that reporting, concentrate those processes because you're not trying to do 12 things. I think I see see in the chat that reporting requirements are unreal. If you have 12 grants for 12 programs, more than likely those 12 grants are gonna have 12 different reporting templates, 12 different things they need. Whether they're gonna need it on a bimonthly basis or a quarterly basis or an annual basis, it will drive you nuts. And thinking about how can we really narrow down what we're doing to get to the core of what we wanna do, and maybe you know what? When we think about it, in order to have I I've worked with organizations where they just had to make a decision. In order to have custom reporting from a donor, there was a dollar amount threshold that they would accept. I said, I think for them, they were a $40,000,000 organization, and they said, if you're not giving us more than a $100,000, you get our standard reporting. And you know what? If it doesn't work, we're gonna walk away. Because the time it took to do some of that complex detailed reporting we've all had to do, at the end of the day, wasn't worth the money we were able to put in the program because you're spending so much on the back end and reconciliations and time. So really thinking about where can we narrow the focus. And, also, it means your fundraising team, your development teams are more focused in what they're out there selling. That sometimes a more focused message is easier than support our organization. We're great in our community. When you can go, here are the three things we're doing this year. That's how with some donors, I was talking to a a financial planner, and he said some of his high net worth individuals, they're looking for more focused nonprofit rather than just throwing general unrestricted money, which as an accountant, I love because there's less reporting. They wanna give more nuance funding, and sometimes having a more focused nonprofit will allow your development team to search that out rather than trying to fund 12 programs or find we're trying to find three fund three. And it just makes everybody better. And I think the other side of this, which I am gonna hit before we move on to the next section, this type of thinking more than likely will come with short term pain. There's no way around it. When you refocus your mission, when you say, okay. We're going from 12 programs to six just because some of these ancillary programs, we got some reporting, We're not really hitting the number of people we want to. They're short term pain, but the goal of what we are talking about today is to make sure that your nonprofit exists two, three years down the road. That you're not borrowing from tomorrow to maintain the status quo and really building that solid foundation. So we'll talk about later. When those strategic opportunities present themselves, you can jump. You don't have to sit and think about it. You don't have to have 10 management circle meetings and bring your board together because you are ready to grow because you have this foundation. And I think it's just it's something to keep in mind, and it's it's not easy to think about. When you think about restricting, people are gonna push back, but it's really if you some nonprofits, if you don't do this today, two years from now, it's not gonna be about restricting. It's about, okay, where do we offload our programs to because we just can't operate. And that's what I'm trying to avoid with some of my clients and and talking about today. On that happy note, that brings us to our first poll question. I know Sarah will launch it. So what is the primary benefit of focusing your efforts rather than expanding operations? And this is just after everything you heard, is there anything that really sticks out? Because I think some nonprofits are really gonna be different. And some of these conversations, it's just about we'll talk about it later. Some of it's about just honing in your employees to think about things outside of what they do day to day. Because I think a lot of people at nonprofits, if you're not involved in management decisions, you just see what's in front of you. And having some of these conversations, I think, can really spark or help people understand what's going on above them and what else is going on within an organization. And all of the above here is is kinda running away with it. Not surprising to me. The next one, obviously, is, prioritize resources and initiatives effectively. I think this is a big one because where can we kind of place the people we have? Can we reallocate them? Can we do something better? And I think sometimes that focus allows you to really take that step back and figure out what's next. Going back, and I know the poll will be open for a little bit longer in case in case you're you're still thinking about your answer. So really thinking about okay. We're thinking about restriction. We're thinking about how do we get to where we need to be, and a big part of that is what is our organization's central purpose? What is our mission? And thinking about how do we get to that core mission and get back to the basics. Because sometimes that's what what you need. As funding comes in, I know there's that opportunity. You know what? We can get a large grant, but we have to build out this program we don't do today. And I think in the past, most nonprofits would go, of course, we will. We get the we get the overhead fee that helps pay for admin. We'll hire some people. We'll grow. But I think that sometimes leads to organizations with tentacles, and then you're trying to support so many programs with so many different initiatives, so many different funding streams that it just makes it hard. So I think getting back to your central purpose and how do you do that? It's not easy. Like I said, a lot of executive directors would immediately say, we can't cut anything. And a lot of program people would say that. Now I'm coming at it from a finance point of view, which, you know what, cuts have to happen. How can we make them the least not hurt the organization the most? Make them make them efficient if you're gonna have to cut something. So a few a few techniques I've seen for really getting back to that mission, have a mission workshop. And I think this is good thinking about, okay, do you have some long tenured employees, and do you have some newer employees? Getting them in the same room and having them describe what the organization does can really help. Because you have the long tenure of people who were there who might have started when you were a $2,000,000 organization and now you're a $30,000,000 organization. What do those people think the organization does Versus somebody who just got the sales pitch and was hired. So I can tell you at my organization, I think about what we do differently than somebody who's been here for twenty five years. And I think it's really getting back to where do you meet in the middle? What is your organization doing? Some of that is I I've also seen organizations, you know, we have that conversation. Now we're gonna have everybody give their elevator pitch of what the organization does. Because hearing, especially the people on the ground describe what they do, sometimes really brings out that core mission and allows you to focus and allows you to really focus all those efforts. And I think another big thing is stakeholder interview. And not just donors, but the people you serve and the communities you serve, What do they see you do? And I think another thing I see I was talking to a c a CEO about is one of the things they're focusing on is the programs where they do outreach to bring people into the organization versus the programs where people come to them. And they're focusing more today on the organizations where people come to them. They're the programs where people come to them because that's what the community is relying on them for. Yes. It's great if we can do outreach and bring people into our circle and bring people into our program, but if we have people walking in off the streets for two of our programs and we're fighting to bring people into to another two, Why aren't we focusing on what the community thinks they need and is walking in to do? And I think talking to them about why they're doing that will really bring you that insight and let you know what you're known for. Because what the community thinks of you should be what you're doing, especially when you're talking about restriction. And I think once you have those conversations, now we're gonna get into, like, the finance nitty gritty of how you can use that for decision making, and I think it's making sure that everything you're doing aligns to that mission. When you're we're thinking about that we we've had all our interviews, we've had our workshops, we've redefined what our mission is and what our goals are. Now let's think about, okay, which programs align with that? Which strategies, which strategic initiatives align with that? And what was it? You know what? Two years ago, we were really hopeful, and we wanted to add these strategic initiatives, but what it what aligns with what you're doing today? And really thinking about it while you're budgeting, while you're reforecasting, while you're developing a strategic plan, avoid that mission trip. Make sure you're staying on course, that you're staying within the mission. And I think it it's really big. It's, tell my three year old all the time. Just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should. Yes. You can jump off your bed. Doesn't mean you should because you're gonna fall, hurt yourself, and cry. Not always the same with the budget, but I think it's important to think about just because you can get funding to start an initiative or start a program or open a location, could you? What resources is that gonna drain from your kinda shared back office, from your focus? And maybe there's another organization in your community that you can partner with. You know what? They can do this program better. And for the time being, we're just gonna send people to them, know they're taken care of, but they are specializing in that and we're specializing in this. And I think it's really about transparency and bringing people together when you have these conversations in order to make sure that you're all moving together. And I think some of this goes against some of my old school finance brain, which is I know everything. I don't need to be transparent. Here's the numbers. Let's move on. But I think some of these conversations are easier when you bring people together, have that transparency, communicate what's going on and why. Now people aren't always gonna agree, but at least they can have the ability to try to understand what's going on so that you can move forward together. So talked about we we're now focused. We know what our mission is. So now it's getting back to, alright. How do we do this? How do we move forward? And it's gonna sound simple, but it's really now okay. The programs we wanna do, we know what we want the organization to do. Now it's really that discipline sources and uses approach. And I think there's a lot of nonprofits that are good at this and there's some that aren't. And it's really matching up where is the funding coming from and where is it going. And are we able to fund the programs or what do we need to fund those programs? And before we get into this, the one caveat I wanna give is, I think from a finance perspective, it's important not to go kind of cold blooded hard numbers, here's sources and uses. I was reading something the other day. It said a a cost cutting CFO will just cut cost to hit the bottom line. A good CFO will look at and this was more for profit, but look at what drives revenue and support those programs and cut costs and things that aren't really driving revenue. Even if it's even if it's you're having a net profit, if 80% of your revenue is driven from one sector, let's make sure we support that sector rather than something that might be more profitable, but you know what? It's a smaller part of the company. When I think about a nonprofit, it's okay. We might be able to help more people with this program. It might cost more and easier. If we cut it, balance budget. End of story. We're great. But if that's our core mission, okay. Now we gotta figure out how do we support this. Where can the funding come from? That goes back to when you're more focused, sometimes it's easier to send your development team out and go, this is the program you're funding. Here are the results we're getting. You can see how many people we're helping. We just need this funding. And sometimes that's an easier sale sales pitch out in the wild than, hey. Support our nonprofit. We're awesome. So I think part of this, and I believe in October, we're actually gonna have a full webinar on how to visualize financial data and different ways to tell a story. But I think of when I think about how to kind of explain sources and uses and explain this to I really always talk about program people just because they're not trained accountants. They are there to help people. Their goal is to be in the community, helping people, and really just they're not trained to read an income statement. That's just not what they do. So from my feet as a CFO, part of my job during a budgeting process is to create visuals. People love pictures. And create those visuals that tell the story that can really help them understand or create that spreadsheet that, you know what, they enter we I've entered all the income. When you enter your expenses, you can clearly see what funding your program needs or how a change in personnel or a change in vendor can affect your bottom line and talk to them about this is what we need to do, whether we need you to break even or, you know what, we gotta figure out how to cover 80% of your cost because we know we can raise the other 20% based off the market and what we think. So really making it easy for a non finance person to understand what's going on, but also giving them, I don't even say autonomy, buy in and ownership of some of this decision making and just go, this is what we need to do to make sure we're not only here tomorrow, but next year. Because I think from a program point of view, it's like, oh, we have net income. You know what? On our financial statements, we have $3,000,000 in cash in the bank. There's no reason I need to cut something from my $800,000 program. You know what? We probably could fund it next year. But if fundraising keeps going the way it's going, we're not gonna we're not even gonna exist as an organization next year. So maybe we help less people this year, but we're still able to help the same number of people next year and the year after and then hopefully grow. I think that's part of the conversation. And I think it's also sometimes what part of this conversation is is taking a step back and explaining how an organization works to some of your staff. And I think sometimes sitting in a management meeting, sitting in an executive committee, you forget not everybody sees everything. So if you're an organization with multiple program, multiple facets, I would say, I'm in affordable housing, but we also have community benefit services. My community benefit people don't understand that. We have 20 companies that run real estate buildings that rent out rent out affordable housing apartments. And I need to think about that when I think about cash flow. I think it's really thinking about how can I explain what's going on to show how funds are being allocated? We get this grant, but you know what? Part of it has to go to cover our back office cost for reporting for the development team that's writing up the reports and wrote up the proposal. Our CEO who's going to the the lunches and the and the speak the speaking engagement as part of the funding source. And just showing how the entire grant that they got, how it's being spread in a way that's easy to understand. And I think another part of it I'm gonna hit on again is really that communication strategy. How are you going to communicate what's going on, not only to your budget owners, not only to your board and executive staff, but to the whole team? If cuts are gonna be made, how are you gonna communicate that? And I think it's important because I think a lot of people are worried about in the nonprofit sector, they're worried about their jobs. They're worried, hey. I hear about all these cuts. I hear about grants being taken away and funding changing. Am I gonna be here tomorrow? And, unfortunately, I think the answer for most of us to them is, I think so. Because we I I can't predict what's gonna happen. What I can do is make sure that we have a solid foundation that when something comes up, we're able to react in real time, have had the conversations, people are ready to look at things and make changes, but also being transparent. It's like, here's what we know today. Like, I I know we've had the conversation with our staff. Here's what we know today. We have a $6.30 budget. As soon as a federal budget gets passed and we know what's coming out of that, we're gonna reforecast our budget, and then we will tell you what's going on. But we all all we can do is work with the information we have today, and tomorrow if something changes, we will reanalyze and let you know. And I think keeping that open line of communication, now you don't have to put your entire budget on the screen with everybody's salary, but having some form of transparency, I think, will help. And I think it goes back to you're not gonna please everybody. People are still gonna be angry. People are still gonna want more information. But if you can get that information out to 80% of the people, I think it's important. And I think another thing that's important is really aligning those expenditures with mission critical activities and thinking about where are you spending money and how is it going to further your mission and your program and which is hard because I am a finance person who loves technology and say, okay. We're gonna focus on the mission and we're gonna restrict. But you know what? A good fund accounting software is what we need today. But I think it's important to think about when you're aligning these expenditures, submission critical activities, what capacity do you have? Are you able to measure your endowments and your funds easily in your accounting system rate? Now. And if you're not, if you're spending so much time doing quarterly, year end reporting, then maybe the investment that is mission critical is, you know what? Let me call up Sarah and talk about Blackbaud. Let me talk about FBNX case. Because you know what? The reporting we're giving out to funders, it's not worth it. I'm spending too much time putting things together, and you know what? If the federal budget passed tomorrow, I'm still doing my reporting from May, then I'm not even gonna be able to think about it for another month. And and my budget to actuals aren't worthwhile. So when I talk about mission critical activities, it's not just the program. It's how can you drive the organization further when thinking about, okay. Here's our mission. Here's the programs we support. What are what are my reporting needs? How am I telling this story both out in the world and internally? And some of that will be building that internal capacity because I think a lot of organizations, when you think about restricted, it's like, okay. We're gonna restrict, but all the extra money we have is gonna go into our program. And that's still not setting you up for success with that foundation. So while there is wasteful spending, I'm sure we can all get rid of it, make sure you don't cut way too much. You wanna make sure that your people have what they need to do their job. You wanna make sure, you know what, a computer breaks, we can buy a new one. I'm not asking somebody to reboot their computer every three hours just because that's the only way it functions. And really thinking about how can you drive that purposeful growth? Where do we see opportunities that, you know what, we get a call from another nonprofit, They're sunsetting one of their programs, which is one of our mission critical programs. Let's let's let's take it over. Let's let's bring in their people. Like, we have the capacity because we we now know exactly what we're doing, and we're driving that personal growth purposeful growth. So and I know sitting here as a finance person, I could look at your financials. I can go, here's where you need to cut. But that is not practical. A finance person should not be making the unilateral cuts to a budget because, a, I'm not the person in the field. Routinely, what I think the people in the field need is usually not what they need. And every nonprofit does things a little different. And what has made your organization a success? You need to make sure you don't lose when you're thinking about these goals and if you have to make cuts. Same thing for your mission. It's engaging those people and making sure you get that diverse perspective. If you're gonna start cutting resources or people, make sure you're talking to the people this will affect and making sure that they're still able to do their job because the last thing you wanna do is make cuts to personnel and then burn out the people you keep and then they leave. Because you already you already you're already stretched thin and now you're losing the people that you are relying on and have planned for. And there are many ways to do it. One of them is a SWOT analysis to really identify those strengths and weaknesses of each program, where the opportunities are. And I think another part of this is also, okay. We're keeping these programs. Let's scenario plan for threats. Where is our where can our organization be in danger and what would happen and thinking about how to keep going and prepare yourself. I mean, it's a gloomy subject. Well, let's prepare for the worst. What happens if this grant gets pulled or this funding gets pulled? And thinking about how to move forward. Facilitate those goal setting workshops, focus on that mission alignment. Like, bring people together. And sometimes, it might seem weird for finance to be leading that, but we're talking about budgeting. We're talking about making sure it's strategic alignment that maybe is a good thing to come out of finance because at the heart of it, it's numbers based. And you can present a picture before you start getting into the real conversation about how people do their jobs. And, obviously, that's gonna get somewhat emotional and people are gonna have very strong opinions. But at least starting from a point of cold hard numbers can at least set the direction the conversation up to move in the right direction. And I think the key here, prioritize your goals based on impact potential. Going back to, do we have programs where people seek us out versus we have to do a ton of outreach? And if we put if we're able to put more resources to where people think they need us and are walking in to find us, are we gonna be better aligned with what our community needs today rather than what we think they need? And I think it all comes back to, are we the best organization to do this? Talk to your coalitions. Talk to your local nonprofit group, state, city, what have you. Figure out what other people do. Is there somebody that's better suited for one of these ancillary programs that maybe we're gonna sunset? But you know what? We can work to move that to another organization that's gonna have so much better capacity to handle that. So that way you're not just dropping your constituents or your stakeholders, you're just making sure they're taken care of in a different way than you doing. And that leads us to our second poll question. So what abilities are provided by aligning expenditures to mission critical activities? Once again, we're gonna restrict but have all of the above. I mean, it it I understand why all these bugs there. We put it there because it's just so hard to pick one. But really thinking about, I think, from my point of view, it is that all of the above, but really it's I think it's it's being ready to drive that person for, purposeful growth. It's how can we set ourselves up to have that foundation when the time is right, we can go. Open my pages. Alright. So we thought about how to restrict. We've restricted our mission. We've thought about kind of where we need to put our focus and our funding. So now let's take it into the back office. Let's take it into finances corner. How can you set the organization up by budgeting, by having better reporting, and just being able to give your people the information necessary that when the time comes to make the right decision? So the first one, flexible budgeting methods. And the easiest way I can describe this is I think we all have that budgeting, and I think most nonprofits, we're gonna budget to zero. Zero balance budgeting, everything that comes in is gonna go out to the program or some form of capacity building. We just wanna have some form of net income or zero, and that's how we do it. But maybe it's a program by program basis, or sometimes I've seen it's, funding dependent budget. So we have our core budget, but if this grant that we submitted comes in, this piece gets added to the budget because we have more resources. And being able to kind of add and subtract in your budget on the fly, I think, is key. And part of this is talking to your board and kinda getting that power to do that. And whether it's, you know what, one of the one of the organization I talked to, what they said during today's, in today's times is, can you create a smaller group of your board that maybe even weeks meets for half an hour, weekly or biweekly with your CEO and CFO? And it's like, here's what we're seeing, and they are empowered to make kinda cuts to the budget or additions to the budget based on what they're seeing. And some of these decisions that can't wait for the next board meeting and can't wait for 18 people to respond via email for a resolution, that we're gonna empower a crisis committee of the board of management to kinda make quick decisions. And I think part of that is that flexible budgeting, being able to make these quick decisions as you see them. Like I said, scenario planning, contingency planning. If this funding gets cut or this funding doesn't come in I know my organization, we're we're we're funded a lot by the city of New York who is notoriously slow to pay. So not only budgeting, but we have to do cash flow planning and make sure and just as I assume that none of the funding that I received from New York City this year is coming in till about, April. And that's how we cash flow plan. So making sure that my contingency plans, my budgets are realistic. No no sunshine and rainbows when budgeting. Make sure you're realistic. Make sure you're thinking about the path and what's happened. Regularly review your budget. I think in the nonprofit world, sometimes we budget once a year, maybe twice a year, and that's it. It kinda just acts as a document, but we just kinda do things by I don't wanna say fives, but sometimes it is. We just kind of we we operate and hope for the best. As we get close to year end, we're gonna look at things. We're gonna look at financials and do what we need to do. But I think having those regular budget reviews, what's changed? Have cost gone up? You know what? Our insurance renewal is six months into the year, and our rates skyrocketed. We're seeing a lot of nonprofits that's happening. Thinking about things like that are out of your control that you have to pay for, let's make sure our budget is up to date. And I think the biggest thing, especially when you think about decision making, is making sure that you have timely budget to actuals. Are you getting timely information into the hands of your people? The example I give, I was working with an organization, and they would pretty much have their books closed on a cash basis, like, the third business day of the month. They wouldn't send budget to actuals out until the twentieth business day because they would wait to see if any invoices came in that would hit the p and l. And I kinda said, when you hit the twentieth business day, most days you most times you're in the next month or about to happen, you lost a whole month of progress. You're missing a whole month of data that waiting for these invoices, you're just hurting yourself. How can we get these reports out faster so people know, okay. This is what I spent last month. Now you'd hope your budget owners know what they're spending. They don't always keep track, but being able to deliver reports that are timely and easy for them to read allows them to kind of help you win this decision making. If you're not giving them the information, you're putting all of this onus on finance to kind of be the budget steward. And while I would say finance should own the budget, it's a collaborative process that you really need to make sure that people have the information necessary to make those decision, make those changes. So it's really how can how can we go about this? From finance out, sitting in the finance chair, how can you help? And it's really having spending limits, having more robust maybe, you know what, we need to go to a purchase order type of system. Maybe we need to tighten I always say sometimes when you're thinking about restriction, we're tightening the purse strings on who has a corporate credit card. Because a corporate credit card is the true nonprofit way to ask for forgiveness because you're just swiping that thing and submitting a receipt. Now some people have policies where you can call back money, but you're not usually gonna enforce that. So thinking about, okay, who doesn't need a credit card? Maybe we move to where people need to shell out their money. We're gonna move to weekly reimbursement. That way, if nobody's credit card bill turns over and if they need to spend money on the fly, they can do it and submit for a reimbursement. That way, we can make sure it's right before the organization pays for it. And or move more things to kind of a purchase order or AP type of system just because then you're you're reviewing it. You're making sure it's within budget before the organization commits. Another thing when I talk about spending limits is who can sign a contract? Who can put the organization on the hook for spend? And sometimes at a nonprofit, that is a long list and it's not really defined. And sometimes my contract people can sign contracts. My program people can sign contracts. Really restricting that group of people of who can approve and kinda put the organization on the hook for things, I think is key. Also going back to something we talked about earlier when we talked about grant reporting and various funding sources, making sure that as a finance department, you're part of that process that when a draft agreement comes out that you're reviewing it for any covenants, any reporting requirements to make sure that, provided a better term, the juice is gonna be worth the squeeze of the the money coming in, that you're not gonna have too much onus on changing what you're doing to meet this requirement. And really thinking about, okay, how does every dollar we spend go back to all that mission centric work? How are we gonna funnel it back to what we wanna do? K. Let's do more. So now we've done that. We've budgeted. How does this set us up kinda to round it out, how does this set us up for growth? And I think it really allows you we know as an organization what we wanna do now. And it really allows us to kinda focus where we're looking for opportunity, where we think we can grow. If we've restricted our programs, then maybe we can open up our geographic location that we're serving or open up our our, demographics to hit more people. Because we're still doing the same program, so it's not really a change in what we're doing. This is just maybe we're hitting more people with the same program rather than hitting the same people with more programs. Does that make sense? And it's also you're gonna have those efficiencies. It's gonna just open up time to review things. Even from a financials perspective, let's just say, you know what? One of the efficiency we we gain by restrictions, we're not doing so much grant reporting within finance. You know what we can do? We can now better review the expenses we have and stay on top of things. Like, I mentioned insurance. We're able to stay on top of things like that, and you know what? We're able to process our insurance renewal sooner so that our broker has more time to shop our our policies, and we're able to look at what happens if we change deductibles. If you're doing that the day before your insurance coverage lapses, you're not able to do any of that strategic work. So thinking about how this restriction can open up efficiencies, not just for your programs, not just for fundraising, but even back office personnel. And I think this expansion then becomes so much more organic and so much easier to do. So like I said, if you are doing the same program with just either a expanded geographic location or expanded demographics, it's so much easier to do that than to spin up brand new programs. And once you do that restriction, you can really think about, okay. I'm gonna focus. I'm gonna get out there. That we're gonna really think about it and gives you I I see it in chat. It gives you that time to analyze things. You're not just pushing papers from desk to desk. You're actually stopping to think. I talked about it before when you when how can we slow down our employees to give them that time to analyze? Especially those people in the field to really think about, okay. What's necessary? How can I do better? And now thinking from a finance team, how can your team help with this? And I think part of it is making sure that everybody's on the same page. Making sure that your staff account and your AP person understands what the organization's here to do. Because I think sometimes it's just I am here I I see a lot of AP people, staff accounts. They're just there to do their job and get out, but you're working in a nonprofit. Let's make sure you understand that maybe even hard cuts are being made and these and how can we support the people in the field as we're restricting what they have. And really thinking about how can we help how can we support, how can we help them have those well planned strategies, how can we facilitate these discussions knowing what we knew. Now there's so much information that runs through development, finance, and executive team. How can your finance team help translate that and analyze that for better decision making? And I think it is part of this is, as you think about this whole thing, it's it's not an easy topic. It's not a fun topic, but there are better ways to do it. That how can you make it somewhat creative? Like I said, I've seen I've seen organizations, they talk they do their elevator pitch at the beginning. What does the organization do? Then they have a whole conversation about what the mission is and what we're supposed to be doing and what we're fundraising for. And you know what? They end that session with another elevator pitch just to see how it changed and to see how much more focused it is. Really getting that that mindset of, okay, we are building a foundation so that in the future, we will still be here to help our constituents and help more constituents. I'm gonna skip the poll three just so we can launch it. K. Now we're coming up on time. What activities and incentives are you excited to try? I would take the word excited with a grain of salt when you read this, but in a weird way, I think some of this I know from a finance point of view, thinking about this restriction sometimes is somewhat exciting because I see I see in the chat, time to analyze. That would be lovely. And some of that is, okay. We're we're cutting the number of programs. We're cutting the reporting requirements. We're cutting the number of segments or account of project codes I need in my accounting system because there's just not as much going on that I can actually analyze what's going on. So I really think thinking about some of that, thinking about those diagrams you can do, thinking about what's gonna make the data better. It can be exciting, depending on how you look at it. And you're you're you're at a webinar for a fund accounting software, so I assume your definition of exciting mirrors mine in some respects. So to wrap up, it's really how do we focus that vision for to get that, that growth. Truly embracing that restriction, getting back to the mission. What are we here to do? What were we founded to do? What do we do well? Where are we getting the most results? And sometimes that is, let's put the program data, the development data, and the finance data altogether in a story to tell where we should be focusing. And really, at the end of the day, how do we bring together the organization not to make the decisions, but to help inform the decisions, but also to understand any decisions that are made. That brings us to the end. Here's my lovely face. Just to wrap up. So Cinnabay for Good. Like I said, I am here to really help. I try to help my clients figure out where the the balance they're they're following in their efficiencies, but to help them use what they have to its fullest, but also tell them where they've hit the boundary. And, really, the goal is for everybody to be so efficient. You're at 02:00 on a Friday, we're all drinking margaritas. So that's the goal. So if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me. Also, if you don't have any questions but you enjoyed yourself, I I the QR code is up there for my organization, and, my executive director would appreciate it because I've taken the time today to present to you all. But thank you, Sarah. Anything to wrap up? Yeah. So don't forget about the resources in the docs tab if you need a link to, all of the tips and then upcoming webinars. Andrea, I was curious, you know, since you've been having these conversation with different kinds of organizations, you mentioned the one that they're sort of using the idea of, like, are folks coming to us, or are we trying to drum up need for these programs? What other kinds of parameters are folks using to make those decisions? And I'm asking you to reply if you can think of any Please. Where are people who put some in chat? Yeah. Some of them, it was very much, that they had a they they had one program that they had a lot of participants, but it was a program that was, like, six to eight weeks once you got in. And they looked at how many people entered and how many people exit, and they saw, like, 60% of the participants were dropping off. And that's something that they they when you looked at the raw numbers of number of participants, it was one of their biggest. But then you looked at who got the outcomes that the organization was shooting for, it was actually one of their smaller program. So I think some of it is just looking at maybe not total number of participants, but outcomes or how you're helping people. And some of that is getting back to the mission. Like, what did you set out to do? What are you actually doing? Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Alright. Let me see if anything else came in. Alright. Well, there. We will be sending out an invitation for our next session, which is gonna be at the September. We're gonna give Andrew a few weeks off for family time. But I think on the September 23, we're gonna be talking about real life ways to use AI and automation because we hear everybody talking about it. But what does it mean? What does it look like? How are people actually using it? Other ways you can kind of dip your toes in right now. So that should be a good discussion. I know we all like practical examples. Yep. So alright. And, yes, we will be sending out the link to register for that as soon as it's ready. Alright. Well, we'll let everybody go. Thank you for your time and our great session, as always. Very much appreciated. Thank you, everybody. Alright. Bye.