Non-Profit
A few years ago, a U.S.-based cultural nonprofit reached out to us. Their mission was inspiring. They existed to support a foreign art museum. But behind the scenes, things were nowhere near as smooth as the beautiful art installations their donors funded.
The Executive Director was frustrated. The board was anxious. Donors were asking tough questions about the financial statements.
And the core issue was simple.
Their accounting was a mess.
Temporarily Restricted and Unrestricted donations were mixed together. Permanently Restricted funds weren’t handled properly, either. The budget was unclear. Forecasts were unreliable. And some past transactions had even been entered backwards. Yikes!
The good news?
They knew what they didn’t know.
That’s always the first step.
We can almost always work with someone who genuinely wants to do the right thing.
We stepped in one piece at a time. We rebuilt their chart of accounts, cleaned up years of entries, properly categorized every donation, and set up reporting that finally made sense to the Executive Director, the board members, and big donors. Bit by bit, the knots they’d lived with for years finally loosened.
The shift was real. Their books became clean and reliable. The Executive Director finally had the reports she needed to make informed decisions. The board gained clarity and confidence to green light bold projects and events. Even the auditors gave positive feedback, which had been rare for them.
And when the foundation was solid, they hired a lower-cost bookkeeper to maintain what we built, which is exactly what a healthy organization should do. (We’ve since built that capacity internally too.)
Sometimes the best work you do is the work that eventually lets you step aside. Fix the foundation. Elevate the team. Leave the organization stronger than you found it.
The Lesson: Invest in experts when needed. Focus on solutions. When your foundation is solid, growth becomes possible and opportunities begin to appear.
