ServicesOne ongoing engagement. Four defined projects.
Some organizations need a finance partner every month. Others have one decision in front of them and need it answered well. Both are legitimate, and it's worth being honest with yourself about which you need. Most clients need one or two of these. Nobody needs all five at once.
Fractional CFO
What's included
- Monthly close report
- Reviewed and reconciled, with a written summary in plain language and open items assigned to someone by name.
- Annual budgeting and cash forecast
- Built from drivers rather than from last year, with a rolling forecast and cash runway you can see coming.
- Strategic decision support
- Model a hire, a program, or a project before you commit to it.
- Board reporting
- A package your board can act on, and I'll present it when that helps.
- Audit support
- Schedules prepared before fieldwork rather than during it, which usually shortens the audit.
- Team development included
- Ongoing coaching for your finance staff as part of the retainer, so the capability stays in the building.
Financial Readiness Assessment
Most assessments of a finance function come down to someone's opinion. This one is measured against an external standard that best fits your organization.
I review your systems, processes, and people in relation to an external framework. For faith driven organizations that's usually the ECFA Seven Standards of Responsible Stewardship. For others it might be general audit readiness, Uniform Guidance for federal awards, a specific funder's requirements, or accreditation standards in your sector.
What you get
- A written assessment, section by section against the framework
- Where you meet the standard, where you don't, and where you're technically compliant but exposed
- Gaps named separately across systems, process, and people
- A prioritized plan with effort and sequence, so your board can see what's a week of work and what's a year
- A summary written for the board rather than for accountants
When organizations run one
- Preparing for accreditation, or renewing it
- A new leader who wants an honest baseline they didn't create
- Ahead of a capital campaign or a major project, when a funder is about to look closely
- After an audit finding, or before an audit you suspect will produce one
- A board that wants an outside read rather than another self assessment
What it isn't. I'm not an accrediting body and this isn't accreditation. An assessment tells you honestly where you stand and what it would take to get where you want to be.
I've run and built finance functions at $2.6 million and at $250 million. I know what a finance function should produce at your size, and just as importantly, what it doesn't need to produce yet.
Mergers and affiliations
More organizations are combining, driven by funding pressure, leadership retirements, and boards concluding that two groups serving the same people should probably be one. Most of those conversations stall in the same place: nobody can say what the combined organization actually looks like financially, so the discussion runs on goodwill until it runs out.
Before the decision
Clarify what the combined entity actually will be. Lay out where functions will duplicate, real savings vs. assumed savings, restricted fund obligations that travel with the assets, lease and debt commitments, the combined reserve position, and what the first twenty four months of cash look like. Also the likely cost of integration itself, for both your people and your bottom line.
After the close
Merging the financial systems, which is vital to determine whether the merger works. One chart of accounts, one close calendar, one set of policies. Fund structures reconciled and restrictions carried forward correctly. Opening balances established. And two finance teams that now have to be one team.
The financial case for a merger is usually made in the first phase and lost in the second.
What this isn't. I don't broker the transaction and I'm not paid on whether it closes. My role is to make sure the decision gets made with real numbers.
At K-LOVE I ran the acquisition function through more than 120 station acquisitions, and led due diligence and post close integration when we acquired a smaller ministry with 25 employees and a $3 million budget. That last one is about the size of most nonprofit mergers.
Financial transformation
A rebuild fixes the records. A transformation rebuilds the finance function itself: what it produces, who owns what, how planning works, and which decisions route through it rather than around it. This is the right engagement for an organization that has outgrown the finance office it has.
When organizations call for this
After rapid growth, a long tenured finance leader departs, a new leader inherits a finance function without instructions, during a merger, at the start of a capital campaign or major project, or when a board has quietly lost confidence in the numbers.
How it runs
- Diagnose. What finance produces today, what leadership and the board actually need, and the honest distance between them. This stage is often the Financial Readiness Assessment above.
- Design. Design. Roles and ownership, which systems to implement, who to hire and who to develop, the reporting package, the planning and close calendar, and the decision rights.
- Build. Budget process, forecast model, board reporting, and whatever has to be corrected underneath to make any of it trustworthy.
- Hand off. Train your team to run it, with me stepping back on a schedule and available as needed.
What you have at the end
A finance function that produces decisions rather than documents, owned by your people. Success is measured by what happens in the year after I leave.
At K-LOVE I replaced the ERP, put in a new FP&A platform, and redesigned the budget process. All three are still in use today. A transformation that depends on the consultant staying isn't a transformation.
Team development
Most organizations don't need to replace their finance people. They need someone to develop them, and there's usually nobody in the building qualified to do it. A controller can't be coached by a leader who has never closed a set of books.
Who I work with
- Your finance and accounting staff. Technical coaching on the close, reconciliations, fund accounting, and the reporting they're being asked to produce.
- Your executive director or CEO. How to read what finance gives you, what to ask for, and what to push back on.
- Your board and finance committee. What their oversight role actually requires, and how to run a finance conversation that produces decisions instead of questions.
When you're hiring
I'm not a recruiter and I don't run searches. When hiring is necessary, I help you hire well: define what the seat actually needs to do, write what good performance looks like in it, run the technical portion of the interview, and give you a straight written read on each finalist's real capability. Then I onboard whoever lands the job into a defined close and planning calendar, so they start with structure rather than building it themselves.
If you're working with a recruiter, I work alongside them. They find the candidates. I tell you which ones can do the work.
What this isn't. Recruiting. I'm not paid a placement fee, I have no incentive for you to hire at all, and if the right answer is developing the person you already have, I'll say so.
A larger version of this
Organizational design. Sometimes the problem isn't the people or the training, it's that the structure was never designed. Which roles should exist at your size, who owns what, where the handoffs are, and what has to change as you grow. That's a bigger engagement than coaching and it's scoped separately, but it's worth raising on a call if it sounds like your situation.
I rebuilt an entire finance department at K-LOVE after a cross country relocation, and I've coached the people in those seats since. I know what each role needs to be able to do because I've had to define all of them at once.
Trellis works best with organizations between $2M and $25M in annual revenue. If you just need bookkeeping, I’m probably not the right fit, and I ‘m glad to connect you with one of my partners.