accounting degrees.
Non Profit Accounting: Visionaries And Your Dream Job!
By Nancy Church
Many of us work with visionaries. You know the type of person I mean: he has a great idea for increasing environmental awareness, she wants to build a treatment center for adolescent boys newly diagnosed with severe behavioral disabilities. Nothing will dissuade them from realizing their dreams. They are focused, charismatic, determined, and persuasive.
It may appear that is an insignificant activity for them. Yet there are founding executives who know that the support provided by good and financial reporting is essential support for them in realizing their vision. I?ve been lucky to work with a few executive directors like this. What characterizes strong working relationships? Here are some markers of good cooperation between program-oriented leaders and nonprofit finance managers.
The founding visionary wants strong, functioning systems in place. She supports you in setting up systems of internal control and understands that you need to test them periodically. It makes sense to her that complete information about transactions should be captured as soon as they occur. Executive directors like this understand that there are ways to minimize the time people spend hunting for missing information or correcting data that was posted wrong in the system.
The visionary understands that accurate reports are built on lots of data and supports your efforts to catch errors early in the process. Accounts payable and accounts receivable entries, as well as journal entries, are proofed and corrected before they are entered into the system.
The visionary executive director wants you to be a part of management team meetings because she knows that when you're involved in or aware of decisions about program
progress, new strategies, fundraising activities, and plans for the future, you can serve the organization much better than you can when you have to rely on others' reports.
The visionary nonprofit executive director cares about accurate reporting to grantors or contract-funders and supports you in spending the time it takes to design systems that will capture transactions at the grant level. Such leaders will also support you in getting the training or consulting help you'll need for yourself or your staff. And they are interested in increasing their understanding of the monthly reports you prepare
Most not-for-profits I've worked with have had a reactive rather than a proactive climate or culture, which keeps people on the verge of a stress response most of the time. Accountants are in a position to begin to change that, creating a healthier work environment, by setting up procedures and sticking to them. For example, you can cut checks one day a week and make people who ignore the deadline wit until the next cycle, or you can require that requests for reimbursement be submitted within a reasonable time - two weeks, say - and deny reimbursement for late requests. An executive director who supports efforts like these is one you can really partner with.
If you work for someone like this, be grateful. If your working relationship isn?t quite this rosy, you can attempt to improve it. Suggest that you be included in management meetings. Make an effort to have regular one-on-ones with the visionary where you can demonstrate your knowledge of the organization?s progress toward its goals. Learn how to convey your message in a new way through graphs in Excel. With patience and a willingness to experiment, you may be well able to create your dream job.
Learn more about creating your dream job in non profit accounting. Get Nancy Church's article on stopping fraud in not-for-profit accounting and stay in the know - subscribe to her newsletter.