44. The rewards and pitfalls of being a non profit CFO - with Tosha Anderson

44. The rewards and pitfalls of being a non profit CFO - with Tosha Anderson, The Charity CFO

Hannah Munro: 0:49 

So, hello everybody and welcome to this episode of CFO 4.0. My name is Hannah Monroe and today we're going to continue our conversation on the non-profit sector. So, today with me I have Tosha Anderson from the Charity CFO. So, welcome Tosha, it's awesome to have you on the show. 

Tosha Anderson: 1:07 

I'm really excited to have this conversation, thanks for having me. 

Hannah Munro: 1:11 

No, because you've had, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. So, tell me a little bit about your background. How did you end up founding the Charity CFO? 

Tosha Anderson: 1:19 

Well, it's kind of funny. I hear that you're not really an accountant or you're the people's accountant. So, first and foremost, I'm an accountant by trade. And all the credentials would suggest that I'm a CPA. But that was kind of accidental. I was in business school during the time 9-11 happened. I actually had aspirations of traveling the world and majoring in international business. I was pretty good at accounting when everyone else was complaining about accounting. And I decided that seems like a pretty practical major. And all of those students are getting jobs. And I went to a private university that was quite expensive. So, I just made the decision to major in accounting instead. Didn't really know what I was going to do with my life, ended up in public accounting, right? Thank you so, much. to keep books in order. So, if you're auditing them or preparing tax returns for them, it is quite a mess, as you can imagine. So, you know, that yes, that was frustrating. And at first, I didn't want to necessarily work with nonprofits for all the same reasons, all the other accountants didn't want to work with them. But I had a little bit of a mental shift when an opportunity came about that I could get promoted if I was willing to work with them full time, because we certainly had the clients, we just needed somebody to better manage them. So, during that time, I stepped into a full-time role, I took, And I really figured out that most nonprofits want to do the right thing. They want to do things by the letter of the law. The problem is they don't know how or they're struggling with understanding what you mean or the capacity internally to even create what you need to get things in good working order. So, rather than being bitter and resentful about it, I became excited and saw it as an opportunity. And it just kind of started from there. Interestingly, knowing from the books, The State of Affairs, there's a lot of turnover, a lot of transition in the nonprofit space, right? A lot of people go into that maybe while they're in transition in their jobs and they take another job that pays better, has better benefits or something like this. So, you see a lot of turnover in the finance department within nonprofits, which is you can imagine, loses the integrity of the accounting and creates quite the mess. Also, I had a lot of CEOs that I would be working with that would ask me, do you know anybody that does nonprofit accounting? And by the way, we only have a part-time budget for it. The reality is I just didn't. I didn't know anyone. And so, I always told myself, somebody needs to come up with a solution for this problem. That wasn't in my cards then, and I didn't necessarily think I was going to become that solution. But my time with public accounting about seven years later ran out. I decided to make a different career change. But I realized more professionals needed to commit their energies to this sector. They need so, much help. And there's not enough people willing to do this work. So, I said, I'm a glutton for punishment. I'll do this. If not me, then who, right? So, I actually took a CFO post at a nonprofit and I worked there for about four years. And that really gave me even a deeper sense of the operational challenges, which it's different when you're just working in public accounting. And then when you actually work on the inside, you get a much broader understanding of how the business actually works. So, I realized that I was getting the same requirements from a compliance standpoint, from a reporting standpoint, all the way down to billing, keeping track of receivables, all of the complexities of say a $10 million organization, there could be a $1 million a year or $500,000 a year annual budget organization that's required to do the same things. But there's a much different budget for infrastructure. There's a much different budget for that administrative team for the $10 million organization compared to the $500,000, right? But the requirements are still the same, which to me seemed a little ludicrous. So, did that for about four years, still had lots of CEO colleagues of mine reach out. Do you know anybody part-time? I need an accountant. My accountant quit, whatever. And I still did not know. I got really burnt out in the nonprofit space, I will say. And I got really burnt out because that position is usually you're the CFO, you're the IT person, you're the HR person, you're in charge of facilities, you might be in charge of compliance, all of these duties, right? 

Unknown: 6:06 

Yeah. 

Tosha Anderson: 6:07 

And I got really burnt out and decided to shake some things up in my life. So, I thought, I'm going to just go out. I'm going to find a couple nonprofits that I'm going to work with. And I'm going to be their fractional CFO. And that was great. I was going to live my best life. I was going to have brunch with my girlfriends and live in my yoga pants every day. And I was going to work like 20 hours a week. And if I can replace my full-time salary with a few clients, then that's the dream. Well, more and more nonprofits were reaching out to me because I knew there was this need. I couldn't say no. Come to find out, I'm not good at saying no. And people are pleading like we're going to lose our funding if I don't get through this audit. I need your help. And so, the brunch and yoga during the day was great. very short-lived, a few months. And interestingly, I had other accountants reaching out to me as well, inspired by what I was doing. They wanted to leave their corporate jobs. They wanted something different. They wanted to have more meaning in the work they do. And the light bulb kind of went off, like, I can't help all of these people. There's accountants out there that want to do different work. Is there a way that I can bring them together? And I have all this knowledge of nonprofit specific. Is there a way that I can transfer that knowledge to incoming accountants that have a good foundation. They just don't have that industry specific understanding. And can I teach people that so, that I can find it easier for nonprofits and these accountants to match up? So, that was five and a half years ago. And now we have clients all over the country. We're based in the United States, right in the middle in St. Louis. But I have clients from coast to coast, all over ranging anywhere between you know, startup pre-revenue all the way to, I think our largest client is about $8 million a year in revenue. So, quite the spectrum. And we've got about 15 people now that work for us full time. So, we went from one accountant that said, I'll help these people to now 15. And what's really cool, all of those other people, 14 people, no one had decided nonprofit is my passion and calling. So, we've now expanded the talent pool for this particular industry from one to 15, I like to think, and growing. We're still hiring. So, if anyone's out there looking for a job, call me. Shameless 

Hannah Munro: 8:16 

plug. It's an interesting piece though. So, why do you think people don't consider nonprofits as a career choice? 

Tosha Anderson: 8:22 

I think the most obvious thing, accountants are... risk adverse, generally speaking, right? And accountants are number crunchers, generally speaking. And we went into this career understanding that there is financial sustainability in this career choice. There's good job prospects. You can certainly live a good lifestyle. With this in common, there's this idea that nonprofits don't have any money and you're going to be making far, far less money than you would in for-profit counterparts. And I don't want to say that that's entirely false, but I don't think people realize that there is a spectrum like any business, right? If you're working for an organization that has a $250,000 a year budget, absolutely, you're not going to be making a lot of money there. But if you work for some of these really large cultural institutions, St. Louis has many art museums, history museums, very well-renowned places, very well-respected. the CFOs are making a quarter of a million dollars or more a year. So, just because it's a nonprofit doesn't mean that you're actually sacrificing on your salary and your benefits. So, consider that option. But I think people immediately default to, there's not enough money for that. And I would like to retire at some point in my life. So, I think that's the number one thing. And the number two thing is, not just why accountants choose to not work for a specific nonprofit and be their CFO. There's a lot of practicing CPAs out there that might work in a firm or on their own firms. They don't generally want to work with nonprofits either because they have a separate set of rules, meaning there's different accounting requirements for nonprofits different than for-profit industries, right? And so,, a lot of people immediately shut down and say, no, we don't work with nonprofits, which is good for my business because we only work with nonprofits. But the reality is probably, I mean, I haven't done the full math, but I would say 90% of the things are the same. It's that 10% that accountants get tripped up on and decide they don't want to have to learn a new industry or a new practice. So, they just dismiss it. But the reality is, just in the United States alone, there's about 1.7 million nonprofits out there, ranging of all different sizes. So, there's this huge market of businesses that have a much greater compliance requirement than businesses And just simply not enough people that's willing to understand these things. So, learning new skills and expertise and subject matter and this idea that they're not going to make any money. So, combine those two things, I'm going to make less money and have to learn more things. That just sounds like a path I'm not willing to go down, but it can be done. And we're kind of here to prove that. 

Hannah Munro: 11:14 

And there is obviously with those two factors, I'm guessing a bit of a shortage of those that have the skills and I guess the willingness to get involved. And are a lot of your CFOs that you're working with, are they coming from accounting backgrounds? Are they coming from other CFO roles and then transitioning into nonprofits? 

Tosha Anderson: 11:36 

Yeah, that's a great question. For me that worked personally with me, it's been a really interesting mix because we have... no one that has worked for a nonprofit as a finance director or CFO type role other than myself. I do have a few people that came from public accounting. So, they were kind of figuring out what they want to do with their lives. Several of the people that work for me might have worked for financial, like investment banking institutions or things of that nature. And they just wanted something drastically different. And so, they came to us with that side of things, and they just needed to get a good foundation on the nonprofit accounting side. So, that's for me specifically. Now, I will say larger than just my firm, but the nonprofit space, most of those CFOs aren't necessarily career– tenured, you know, finance directors that have been in that role for 20 years, many times, you will have individuals that come from healthcare, for profit healthcare, even right, sometimes governmental, but a lot of times large corporate institutions, you know, for profit businesses, that they might serve in some capacity in their accounting or finance team, they take the post of CFO. So, you don't have to grow up in your career in nonprofit to necessarily get that that type of position. So, CFOs, whether you work for me or other ways, come from all different backgrounds. 

Hannah Munro: 13:04 

And I guess one of the questions, why should people work for nonprofits? So, we talked about some of the reasons they don't. What are some of the exciting things about working with nonprofits? Why do you choose to continue to do it five years later? 

Tosha Anderson: 13:21 

Yeah, I think, oh, lots of reasons. For one, the people, you know, and usually I think just about everybody in life in one capacity or another has had face some sort of trauma or know someone close to them that has faced some sort of trauma or they can relate to, whether it's health issues or, you know, infertility to even serving in the military or whatever it could be. I mean, just the options are endless. And so, when you have that personal connection with organizations that you're working with, it just brings a different level of meaning to the work that you do. So, I'm always inspired by all the stories I hear and the founders I meet and the passion for which they've decided to leave They're very lucrative jobs to start this nonprofit with no real guarantee for success. It's really inspiring for one. And for two, I think that there's a huge gratitude, just a high level of gratitude that we get when working with our clients because they will be the first to admit, I don't know any of this accounting stuff. I'm not a financial person. I need you to help get funding, maintain the funding, and keep this place in good working order. And I will say that's a huge shift from leaving public accounting, where you are just by default failing or feeling like you're failing until maybe sometimes you feel better about that. It's a pretty cutthroat place to be, right? Shifting that to... I like to joke with my team; many times there's songs of praise. We have a whole Slack channel with just all of the expressions of gratitude that our clients have for work that we're doing for them or getting them out of binds or kind of saving their day if you will and for that that's what kind of keeps things going I will say it has its own separate set of challenges you have to be very reactive and you're reporting to the CEO and to the board and to funders and you have many bosses um if you will um in the nonprofit space but I think the level of appreciation and personal connection to the mission makes it worth getting out of bed every day. You're easily reminded on a regular basis why you've chosen to do this. 

Hannah Munro: 15:38 

So, if somebody is interested in perhaps exploring a career in nonprofit, what would you say they should ask themselves before they do it? 

Tosha Anderson: 15:49 

So, I think the first thing that they should ask themselves, you know, given some of the Thank you so, much. Obviously, first and foremost, I mean, just kind of wrestle with some of that and figure out why would you want to work in a nonprofit space. And usually what I hear, I'm tired of making rich people richer, or I'm tired of the bureaucratic nonsense, which is plenty of that in the nonprofit space, too, by the way, as you would imagine, or I'm just tired of not feeling appreciated, or I need a better work life balance or something to this effect. That's why a lot of people I think, start leaning towards that space, before just jumping right in, maybe something to consider is serving on a board or volunteering with nonprofits to see what does this accounting look like? What is the day-to-day operations look like? Who are the people you're going to be working with? And is this something you feel like you want to do on an ongoing basis? And so, I would certainly be involving myself more into the nonprofit sector to decide, is this worth taking the leap or not. But I will say, you know, maybe it's because I've been doing it for 15 years, it doesn't seem that much wildly different than any other business. The difference is, I think, nonprofit people are people, meaning they're relational, they're emotional, they like that people connection. And very much different than many other businesses that business is business, nothing is personal. And at the end of the day, we have to do what's right for the business. It's a very different approach. So, it's more of a leadership style change than it is actually the debits and the credits. It's very similar. It's the leadership style. And that was a culture shift for me. you know, growing up in public accounting, um, where business is business to, you know, how do you feel about that? I mean, I was surrounded by mental health professionals. You can imagine. So, I'm thinking, oh my goodness. At first, I thought they're going to realize that I'm maybe not what they're going to question my sanity or something. Am I going to be completely, you know, my psychoanalyzed every day. And then I get in there and I realized, wow, this is a huge culture shift. Um, and how they approach business and how they interact with each other as humans and not just people working for a job. Yeah, it's different. 

Hannah Munro: 18:39 

So, I guess the skills that you need as a finance leader in some ways are different. I guess empathy comes more to the fore. And those relationship building skills. Are there any others that you would call out in terms of skills that you need to be, you know, you might be able to get away with perhaps in the for-profit world, but actually, you know, that you need to have if you're coming into non-profit? 

Tosha Anderson: 19:06 

I would say the thing that I would take for granted working in the for-profit space, and I often talk about this, is that in the for-profit space generally people understand their numbers so, think about this if you're a marketing exec you know your numbers if you're a salesperson you better know your numbers right if you're a manufacturing even on the front lines of production you know your numbers right even restaurant you know managers know what's their cost of labour what they know their numbers everything is eat sleep and breathe numbers right um the nonprofit space tends to, I don't know numbers. Numbers isn't my background. I'm not even pretending to know numbers. I'm not here to get rich. So, I'm not micromanaging these numbers. And you are the accountant. I like to joke. I'm the voice of reason or the, you know, somebody's going to ring this in. Yes. Like, okay, y'all, we need to make sure we have enough money coming in to pay salary. So, um, I think that's a different shift. And as going from the for-profit world where everyone understands and respects the numbers to the nonprofit world, where you have to relay information that as soon as you show something with the dollar sign, or as soon as you start speaking about numbers, you can just see people's face just kind of glaze over like, what are we talking about? And why are we having this conversation? And to be able to articulate it in a way that for one is easily understood, for two that's at least engaging enough that people have determined these are red flags or these are action items we need to take. And you have to be really creative, not just about the presentation, but how to solve problems in the business operationally. It's a very lean, mean machine. You're not going to have an accounting team of 20 people to help you, and you're not going to have a designated IT team. You're oftentimes figuring it out on your own. And I did all of the accounting completely by myself. We had 82 employees, and I was the single only person that did all the back-office stuff. And I had to figure out a way to How do I make credit card reconciliations as easy as possible? How do I reconcile banks as easy as possible? How can I get this billing to bill for revenue out the door as quickly as possible and accurate? And you have to start thinking about processes and efficiency in a way that I think is different. And I talk about accounting that I think there's two different types of accountants. One is a transactional routine, get the work done, the worker bee, if you will. And that's frankly like 80% of accounting, let's be honest. Maybe more, I don't know. We need people like that. But everyone assumes that every accountant is really good at the details, really good at the routine. The reality is if you would put me in a job like that, I would be bored to tears, which I'm sure many of the people listening to this would agree. CFOs aren't generally that type of account. They're the creative person. They're the problem-solve, strategy, thought leader, right? And that's where all of that creativity and problem solving comes into play. So, you have to be really good at that. And you have to be able to speak to people because we're in a relational people focused industry. And relationships and connections important to them. So, they have to feel like they can talk to you. No, and 

Hannah Munro: 22:34 

I love that. And I think it's always fascinating that people, sometimes people's outside of finance, their perception of what that CFO role is very numbers driven. And actually, once the most successful CFOs I have seen and worked with, and those that have really transformed their teams are those that have, like you say, that creative edge. We're not talking about creative accounting. We are talking about a creative problems and that ability to sort of tell stories through numbers. And yeah, it's, I think that's a, it sounds like that actually becomes more important in the nonprofit piece than perhaps it might be in sort of a for profit organization. 

Tosha Anderson: 23:18 

100%. That's the biggest hurdle, because we have to get the CEO to understand the numbers, and they generally do, right? But then you have to explain to the board that's used to seeing financial statements in a different presentation in the for-profit world, because they usually are all from the for-profit world. You have to then... translate that to them in a way that makes sense to them. And then you have to translate that to the funders and the way that they want things to be shown. So, there's this constant translation and creativity on how you get people to understand the impact of what they're doing or what the organization's doing. And without the ability to effectively communicate and being creative about that is going to be really difficult for somebody in that role. 

Hannah Munro: 24:01 

Absolutely. And I guess it's, also thinking about the other type, the other stakeholders within the business. So, you mentioned obviously the board of trustees that may or may not have a business background or a for-profit background. And I guess also working across the wider organization because you're working I'm assuming in a lot of these for-profits and certainly from the ones that I've worked with, with a lot of volunteers, especially for, you know, for the non, I would say strategic roles sometimes. So, how is that, how do you balance that with obviously the need to be able to get things done and to be able to stand behind your numbers, but also making sure that, you know, you're using those skills and, you know, those are volunteer hours to the best advantage. 

Unknown: 24:49 

Yeah. 

Tosha Anderson: 24:49 

I would say generally the board are the volunteers that we interact with the most. And I think trust is really important with the board. Fortunately, I can't think of any situation where the board is, the relationship with the board is volatile in any way, or there's a misgiving or mistrust there. But that's certainly not always the case. Many boards are involved much more when they question the integrity of the numbers, not so, much fraud, theft sort of thing, but competence. And they feel like and that is a responsibility, right? The fiduciary responsibility making sure the organization is in good working order, financially speaking. Fortunately, once you establish and build that trust with the volunteers, and sometimes that's just education and training, so, articulating where do we get money from? How do we spend money? How does that show up on these financial reports? What did we expect to happen? And what is actually happening? And the big question with the nonprofit world is, is there any point in the year which we're going to run out of money? And then what are we going to do if that happens? So, being able to be really proactive in the communication with the board, so, different than I think maybe how some accountants present, well, here's your financial report. This is what happened in the past. And that's it. Okay, well, that's moderately helpful. How does that translate to where we're going, where you think we're going? What should be on our radar? Because they are volunteers. They don't want to spend hours and hours and hours poring over financial statements, making incorrect assumptions, trying to make sense of what does this mean? What does this mean to the organization and the budget? And so, figuring out ways to get really concise, clear, and figure out what information they want to know in order for them to ask really great questions, because that's their job. And I find oftentimes in the absence of that story behind the numbers I'm describing, board members, especially that don't come from a business background or even a financial background, they just don't ask any questions. And frankly, I think that does the organization a disservice. They feel... lacking confidence or unsure. They just don't want to look silly in a board meeting, so, they just don't ask any questions. And that's where I think things start to fall apart. So, presenting things in a way that people fully understand and they can ask questions is really important. 

Hannah Munro: 27:17 

Absolutely. And I guess one of the other challenges I'd love to hear about how you manage it across your portfolio is actually what you report on, because it goes beyond financial measures, where it's obviously a typical non-for-profit, which is, you know, what is the amount of money on the table? But actually, it's more about the deliverables for the mission. So, how do you approach measuring the success of the non-profits that you work with? How do you get to a point where you can actually tie the spend back to the results? 

Tosha Anderson: 27:49 

Yeah, that's a great question. So, our clients get financial reports every single month. Those reports at a minimum are going to include now keep in mind, we're not doing audits, we're not doing that these are financial reports, right? As many of your listeners are probably familiar with balance sheet or, you know, the nonprofit world has their own special titles, but essentially a balance sheet, essentially profit and loss statement, a budget to actual and so, where do we expect things to be? And then where are we actually at with respect to that? And then also, we always give an executive summary. So, this is actually a written narrative to explain the story behind the numbers that helps people understand on our balance sheet, these are some issues. We're running out of cash. We're not collecting on our receivables, our debt's piling up, whatever it might be. On the income statement, we're also burning through cash or we're generating surpluses or, you know, revenues are down compared to last year, whatever. Maybe we're comparing that to last year, usually. But the budget is really where did we think we were going to be and where are we on track with that? And I find that that's the most important thing for boards. I will add on for our clients that are cash poor, meaning they have huge cash flow issues. We also look at projections, not just P&L projections, because I think that's what a lot of people think about with projections. Where are we going to end the year? That's important for the for-profit world because that tells us how much we're going to owe in taxes and what can we do about that. In the non-profit world, it just says, are we going to end the year in a balanced budget? I take it a step further. Revenues and expenses mean nothing if you don't have enough cash to get to the end of the year. So, our projections are really evaluating cash flow and figuring out if there are points during the year where that we're going to run out of cash because fundraising is seasonal or cyclical. There might be periods of time, especially our education nonprofits where school is closed during the summer so, we don't get any money coming in and those sort of things. So, those are the kind of reports that we're giving to our board on a pretty regular basis. The most common question is, how's the budget? Not, you know, how are you preparing the budget? That's not what they're meaning. They want to know what are we doing? How are we performing in relation to the budget? Generally, what we've done last year, in many cases, sometimes irrelevant. That's the past. We can't do anything about that. And even on a profit and loss, that might look okay. But really, we're having benchmarks and we're measuring ourselves to that benchmark every single month. And those are the questions that most of our boards ask. structure their inquiries about. 

Hannah Munro: 31:02 

And how involved do you get in the non-financial KPIs as a CFO? So, measuring the impact of the organisation? 

Tosha Anderson: 31:09 

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I like to say that everything really goes back to the numbers, but that's just me being an accountant. You know, I will say when I worked for a nonprofit, I was definitely more... involved in the non-financial KPIs. And some of the things that I'm thinking of is program outcomes. How well are our programs doing in relation to what we promised the funder? And does that have an impact on the money that we're going to have to pay back or that we're going to be able to collect on them? So, that was certainly more of what I've done in the past. A little less so, removed as we're in a contractor role, that's really more in-house for the program directors of organizations to manage. But we definitely pay attention to things like utilization of contracts, which really is how many services are we rendering? And is that on track with what we thought? Meaning, are we going to leave money on the table because the program didn't see as many people as they want or deliver as many services? We might be looking at ticket sales, the number of ticket sales, the number of events that we're having. How does COVID and virtual events, how does that impact what we're expecting to bring in compared to prior years, what we budgeted? Yeah, it could be membership Numbers of memberships, right? Because that, of course, has a financial impact to all sorts of things of that nature. We were pretty involved in those conversations as well. 

Hannah Munro: 32:39 

And as a CFO for a non-profit, is the role and the responsibilities different? Because you mentioned earlier about how you might be responsible for a wider remit than you would normally expect in a CFO role. So, what are the sorts of things that might fall under your remit, or you might have to get involved with as a charity CFO? 

Tosha Anderson: 32:59 

Yeah, great question. So, generally non-profits are structured... in kind of three different camps generally. It's the programmatic side. So, that's why the operation is there to help the people in the community. Then there's the fundraising arm, which generally you have a chief development officer and all the people that work under that individual to raise money. And then you have kind of the administrative arm, the general and administrative. So, that's generally where I see CFOs. oftentimes are in charge of that. Not always, if they're really large, they might start breaking that general and administrative function out a little bit more. But in my particular case, everything that falls under administration is everything except direct service delivery for the programs. and fundraising. Everything else falls to me. It's one of the things, because I'm a creative person, I'm a problem solver, I get bored easily. It's one of the things I loved about the job, but I will say it's probably the thing that burns people out the most. If you're an accountant and you have zero training and expertise on facility management, or HR, or IT, or You're the one responsible for figuring out those solutions, even if you have zero business doing those sorts of tasks. It's just all of the duties as assigned, if you will. And the challenge with that is that if you're spending so, much of your energy on these tasks you're not comfortable or confident with doing, you find yourself spending less and less time doing the thing you are actually good at. So, you'll see oftentimes these nonprofits will look to hire people kind of more like an operations person or a finance director or a business manager, they call it. They try to create a broad enough title to squeeze in everything else, but they're hiring you primarily for your accounting skills. But what I have found in my experience, that that actually becomes a smaller, smaller portion of the time you're actually spending is on the accounting and financial side. That's probably the thing that burned me on the most because no one likes going to work every day feeling like they're failing at something because they don't have the time to catch up or... It's not just, oh, let me go fix this little bug on a computer. I have to research how to fix said bug on the computer. Then I have to troubleshoot how to actually do that, likely be unsuccessful a few times until I eventually figure it out. That's a much longer process. And you spend more and more time doing things that you don't know. Now, that's exciting for many people. Like I said, it's one of the things I like the most, but it's also the thing that leads to burnout. And those things are generally HR, hiring, firing, all the way down to a handbook administration, benefit plan administration. So, handling the open enrollment for all of your different medical or dental vision plans, administering your 401k plan, those sort of things. You would also, because nonprofits have investments, endowments, right? So, you may not be their investment manager per se, but you generally have a big influence in investment policymaking, which does kind of fall in line with finance, of course. But if you're not, if you're a CPA, you're not an investment manager. Two different things. Facilities, it's not uncommon. I'm getting a call at 8 o'clock at night. Hey, the toilet's overflowing. What do I do about this? So, that's not uncommon if you don't have anyone else to field those calls. Technology, I mean, we need a new phone system. Or we need some new computers. Or we have a new employee who can set up the computers for the new employee. That's administrative, right? So, if you don't have someone else to help with those tasks, it's going to fall to the CFO. Contract negotiations, of course. And I'm not just talking about your line of credit or something like this. I'm talking about programmatic contracts. Are you getting the right rate of reimbursement for those contracts, which is actually pretty fun. What else? all kinds of different things in that way. So, you know, it definitely keeps things interesting. 

Hannah Munro: 37:13 

But I guess one of the big things is to actually take a step back and understand where your skill sets lie. And we talk a lot about this with the, you know, being able to step up to that strategic CFO role is actually picking the right people to surround yourself with. And if unlike yourself is, you know, being the go-to person for those kinds of questions, I guess it's, you know, making sure that you're in a role or, you know, whether it's within a nonprofit where you have the team around you to support you, I guess, so, that you can focus on those things that really, that you're good at and you can deliver. 

Tosha Anderson: 37:47 

Absolutely. Absolutely. And be open and transparent about what you're not good at. And, um, Usually people that want to work in the nonprofit are kind of the roll up the sleeves, you know, help out whoever needs to be helped out kind of person, but also understand that it doesn't do the organization any service is what I've learned in hindsight. Yeah. when you burn yourself out and you end up leaving because you were not able to put boundaries in place and just say, I simply don't have time to do this, or this isn't sustainable or something to that effect. So, be, if you're thinking about making that switch, have those conversations in the interview process, be really open about that. And what support do you have? And what, what would your CEO expect your primary functions to be? And how would your success be measured? And what are the things that you should be spending your day on? And how would they break that down if they, in a magic perfect world, how much of your day is supposed to be in accounting and finance? Because it got to me, probably about 25% of my work week was in accounting and finance, even though I was hired to be the accounting and financial person. So, have those conversations and don't be afraid to do that. 

Hannah Munro: 38:57 

So, for those that might be listening to the podcast that have listened all the way through and at this stage and they're like, right, yes, I'm interested in exploring nonprofits as an opportunity. What are your top tips for moving forwards? 

Tosha Anderson: 39:13 

So, top tips, I do a bi-weekly free, completely free webinar where we essentially lend, my business partner and I, we lend ourselves to the public, whoever wants to join our call can. Generally, it's nonprofit leaders that, hey, I don't have an account, and I can't afford an account, but I need to pick your brain about something. Go on over to our website, thecharitycfo.com, subscribe to our newsletter. You're going to start getting email updates for different webinars that we host or different content that we're creating. And really what our goal is to try to transfer as much experience and knowledge that we've collected over the years in a way that's helpful for other people to get up to speed. And you'll start hearing some of the common Um, concerns, issues, struggles that, that nonprofit leaders are facing. Um, so, I think that's definitely kind of a little, you know, insider scoop on, on what the relevant issues that they're, that they're struggling with. Uh, and then, like I said, get involved with a board, um, you know, pick a, pick a nonprofit in your community and, um, We don't necessarily have a resource with that, but generally all communities, many major cities usually have some sort of connection hub there. But you can certainly follow us on social media. Like I said, join our newsletter. You can get access to that. And try to pop into one of our weekly webinars and hear more about the solutions we're trying to offer up, at least to nonprofits. And you can do that at thecharitycfo.com. 

Hannah Munro: 40:38 

Awesome. And I was about to ask you, if people want to learn more, how do they reach out? But I think you summed it up there. Any other ways that people should be reaching out to you to make contact? 

Tosha Anderson: 40:51 

Yeah, find me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. So, just look for Tasha Anderson, T with a, or Tasha with an O, so, T-O-S-H-A. A lot of people get that typo in there and can't find me. But yeah, find me on LinkedIn. And also, like I said, social, I'm very active on social media as well. So, just finding us on social media, you'll be able to click down and eventually find me on LinkedIn. Feel free to shoot me a message if you're interested at all in hearing more about making that switch from for-profit to nonprofit, or maybe someone is running out of college and not sure what to do. That could be a possibility. Happy to chat more. 

Hannah Munro: 41:27 

Wonderful. Well, thank you so, much, Tosha, for sharing your knowledge and your experience. And I'm sure those that may not have considered nonprofits, I'll either be absolutely geared up to say that nonprofit is the thing for them or they're going, no, I think I made the right choice. So, thank you for your open, your honesty, but also about showing us a different side, I think, to how exciting it is to work with nonprofits. So, thank you so, much. 

Tosha Anderson: 41:54 

Thanks for having me. It's been fun.