Re: Pro Bono Financial Management
Where do you think the nonprofit sector could effectively use financial management resources?
Some thoughts:
- To start with, for volunteers from the corporate finance world to be useful to nonprofits, they need to understand how nonprofit finance works. Taproot could provide a primer: nonprofit accounting, grant process, reports, etc. This way the volunteer starts with some of the tools to speak their language.
- Ability to "measure/quantify results" is one of the biggest gaps for nonprofits (and corporations as well, to a lesser extent--since the bottom-line is usually the baseline).
- As applied to financial management for nonprofits, I wonder if "developing good financial hygiene" or "understanding where their money is going" or "introducing measurement mechanisms for their resource expenditures" might be good goals for Taproot projects.
- In other words--have Taproot volunteers go in (properly prepped as to how nonprofit finances work), do a quick, high level audit (starting with the annual report).
- Where is the money going? If it's not clear, then you need better accounting controls.
- How does the resource allocation align with the nonprofit's goals? If it's not aligned the way they thought, some recommendations can be made as to how to improve them.
- Are the results commensurate with the amount of resources expended? If the answer is not clear, then better ways to measure results are needed.
- I think one of the biggest contribution corporate resources can make (on the financial management front) is introducing a systematic mindset of accountability and measurement, and helping to put in place the processes and tools to execute and improve on it.
