Video: If You’re Always Looking Back, You Can’t Lead Forward: Claiming Your Place as the Chief Future Officer (CFO) | Duration: 3596s | Summary: If You’re Always Looking Back, You Can’t Lead Forward: Claiming Your Place as the Chief Future Officer (CFO)

Transcript for "If You’re Always Looking Back, You Can’t Lead Forward: Claiming Your Place as the Chief Future Officer (CFO)": Hey, everyone. Welcome to the 3rd session in our CFO series. We're so glad you're here today. I'm Sarah Curry. I'm part of the marketing department here at Blackbaud, and I'm gonna be your host. I'm going to go through a few housekeeping items on the platform and for CPE credit while everybody logs in. So we'll get started with that and then kick off our session. So the first thing is you should be able to see all of our engagement tools on the right hand side of your screen. You should be able to see chat, which I see some of you in there already. So thank you for doing that. You should be able to see messages. You should be able to see our docs tab. So that's where all of our resources are. So if you want to go ahead and open that and download the PDF of today's slides, you should be able to see those now that we've begun the session. There's also a section for Q and A. If you have any questions throughout, go ahead and put them there. We'll share them and, we'll answer them throughout as we're able, and we'll also have time at the end for live q and a. One other thing, and I'll talk a little bit more about polls as they relate to CPE credit in a few minutes. But the polls functionality only shows up in that engagement panel when the polls are live. So, just to give you all a sample real quick, I'm going to turn our first one on. So you should be able to see it right now in that engagement panel with a little red dot. Those polls, you do not have to press submit. I see some of you answering. Go ahead. You'll do it. Just do it early. You do not have to press submit. You just click the answer that you want, and the system logs it. If for some reason you're not seeing polls or anything like that, let us know in the chat or the q and a, and we'll help you there. I'm gonna close it now. Don't worry. This didn't count as your first one. I just wanted everybody to see where it is. All right, let's go to the next thing. So one other housekeeping item, if you're interested in talking with someone from our sales team today, you're welcome to do so. We have Garrett on the line. You can see his information in the, the speaker section and his bio. You can chat with him or send him a message. He is very wonderful to talk to. There's also a link to book time with him. And if you are somebody that has a question about your software or you need help with anything like that, I love to help route those when I'm able to, but we had 1600 people register for today's session. And I know my limit, And I'm not able to connect everyone with their support rep or their account manager. So, if you have a question about that, if you'll use the links or the phone, number on the screen, that would be really helpful because I do try to help with those when I see them, but there's probably just gonna be, too many people and too many chat messages today for me to make sure that that ends up where it needs to. Last thing, and then we'll get started. For those of you that are hoping to get CPE credit today, there's a few requirements for you to get that. We will be, awarding 1 at the end of the session. You have to attend for a full 50 minutes. I do check that. So please try to stay on for the full 50 minutes. If for some reason you run into an issue and need to refresh your browser, we freeze, anything like that, do that. Don't worry about it. The system knows that you are on before, and it will continue to log your attendance. You can also send a message to me and let me know if you have any issues like that. But I do check attendance, so please try to stay on the the full time. We also need you to respond to 3 of the CPE poll credits or, excuse me, poll questions. Those are logged as CPE in the title. Andrew and I will verbally alert you that we're opening those, and we'll give you time after we've moved on in the slides. They'll stay open in the background so you have time to submit. And if you run into any issues, send me a message. But, again, it's really easy to submit those. So just click on your answer. We'll get it. I normally send those out about a week, a max of 2 weeks after the session. So you'll receive that from our Fintech marketing email address. And if you have any questions, about that, please feel free to email me. Okay. With that, let's get started. We're welcoming back Andrew, who is our series speaker extraordinaire. So, Andrew, thank you for being with us again today, and we have, a guest with him, Yihal Parkoff. So, Andrew and Yihal, thank you so much for being with us today. We really appreciate your time, and I will kick it over to you all to go ahead and get us started. Thanks so much, Sarah. I'll introduce myself. My name is Yael Parkoff. I'm a CPA and a manager at 4 of us Mazars in our nonprofit advisory practice and our digital technology strategy and innovation team. I started my audit my career in audit working mainly with nonprofits and health care organizations. And then a few years ago, moved over to our nonprofit advisory team. And I really just love being able to work with such amazing clients and organizations that are doing really great work. On a more personal note, I recently moved from New Jersey to Philadelphia with my husband and our 10 month old son, almost 11 month old, and our 10 year old terrier mix, named Freckles. So, we we've got our handful handful of them. I also grew up in Dallas. I saw some of you from Dallas in the chat. So, that's me, and I'll hand it back to Andrew to introduce himself for anyone who doesn't know him yet. Alright. Well, thank you, Yale. And thank thankfully, you could join us, and thank you, Sarah, for, giving us this awesome platform. As I said in the chat, we love speaking to the Blackbaud community. You guys are really active and especially in the chat, we try to keep up. But usually it's a runaway train with all the conversations, so we will do our best. So a little bit about me. I'm Andrew Harr. I'm a director here at Corvus and Czaras. I help, in our nonprofit advisory. I also help run our nonprofit digital technologies team. And the easy way to explain it is we just try to find efficiencies for our clients and help them grow. With any nonprofit, it's how do we work our back office to really further the mission. And that really drives us home what we're gonna talk about today. It's really I know in our first session we did with the black bot and the CFO series, it was talking about how to be a new CFO, either a controller or coming from for profit. And I think having conversations with a lot of you post these webinars, I think today is gonna be some things of how to be a better CFO. And I think quite frankly, some of this you're gonna be sitting here is aspirational, but I want you all to think about how you can start working towards this. Because I think a lot of the people we've talked to either, a, would love to do the things we talk about today and just don't have the time, or, b, don't have a CFO. You're either a controller, a director of finance, an accounting manager, and working towards this. That maybe this is the next step in your career and thinking about all of these things if you put them together will really supercharge your nonprofit, and at the end of the day, we'll be able to drive your mission further. That's why we like working with nonprofits because at the end of the day when we help people, it it just means you're doing a lot more. So to get to our objectives today, what we hope to discuss, and we usually we usually do so, the evolving role of the CFO. So a lot of we're gonna talk about the CFO has always been that chief financial officer. The buzzword these days is calling it a chief future officer. Not just worrying about what's happening day to day, what having the reporting for a board or management. It's really what does tomorrow, 5 months, 6 months, a year look like, 5 years, planning for the future. I mean, we all I was at a nonprofit during COVID, and I would say my my CFO at the time was a little ahead of the curve. We were planning for 2 weeks of no work in January. Now no one had any idea what was coming, but he was trying to stay one step ahead. And thinking about how to be that chief future officer, how to pro prepare your organization for all the peaks and valleys, up and downs that happened. How do you develop that future focused mindset? Like, discover some tools and skills that'll help you lead your organization into the future. And then as most of what we've talked about in the CFO series, how do you change? What is that roadmap to change and having some practical tips to build on what we talked about in the last series, which was about that change management and that project management. So hopefully, building upon those skills we've already talked about to really give you that roadmap for the future. So that brings us to kind of the first polling question. So, but I know we have it in the chat, but what is your current role? And if your role doesn't necessarily align with something here, choose maybe what your role would be called based off your job description. I know a lot of nonprofits, sometimes their roles vary. I know I was always given new titles when I was at a nonprofit with no new job description or pay. That's how they wanted to satisfy me, but we're just getting a sense. And it looks like it's it is that leadership in the accounting and finance department who's joining us today, which is great to see. And we hope you can take some things away and really use these skills moving forward. So that brings us to the evolution of the CFO. And I think I was talking to somebody the other day and really 5, 10 years ago, that CFO was just the person who let me collate all the inform information I have. Let me bring together the financials, bring together my treasury, and be able to report upon it with some form of accuracy and analysis. Maybe a very high level analysis, especially in the non profit world just because there's usually not a lot of data available. A lot of stuff was manual and it would take 15, 20 business days to close the book. There's not time for analysis. But in today's day and age, it's moving more towards the CFO is expected to be that forecasting person. That person who's gonna know what's coming 5, 10, 15 years down the road to be able to plan for it. What is that strategic plan that development and operations has come up with? And has finance thought about how it's gonna fund it? Is it funding it through more donations or a program cert a line of revenue or debt? And thinking about how to build upon that future forecasting and be able to present a cash flow and really work on it. So it comes down to what makes a good CFO. And I think the we're gonna I wanna talk about some general guidelines. And I think the thing to keep in mind is while these are general guidelines, every organization is a little different. And we always talk about that especially with nonprofits that they can really differ. I can show you 2 nonprofits. So my background is in tax. I'm gonna refer to the 9.90. Look at the 9.90. You have the same program service revenue, the same same expenses, and they're gonna be run completely differently. And they're gonna need different things out of the CFO. We've seen many organizations where that CFO is that high level analytical thought leader and really just trying to chart the path forward for the organization. And then we see some CFOs who are really down in the weeds of the accounting and knowing where things are. And sometimes that works and sometimes you need a mix of both. But thinking about what does the organization need at the time? Most CFOs, it's a really hard job. And I I I always say this is you kinda have to be at 10,000 feet and on the ground at the same exact time. Because at the end of the day, as a CFO, you are the last line of defense for a board or management. That if there's a question on why did we spend so much in professional fees, you have to have the answer on the spot. But at the same time, you shouldn't be doing a bank rec week month to month. So thinking about that, being highly adaptable and flexible. And we always say one of the most important things, especially in a nonprofit and especially sitting in a finance department, is being able to adapt to what you're seeing around you. The example I always give is when I went from public accounting into a nonprofit. For the 1st 3 months, no one understood what I was saying. I know some of you have heard this before. And I had to reconfigure how I spoke to be flexible to meet the needs of the people in my organization that had been there for years. Having that strong communications to build, as I say, part of finance that I really didn't realize until I got to the level I'm at now is telling a story. When you present financial statements, you are trying to tell a story to your board. And it can be a bad story. Bad years happen, but being able to craft the why I think is important. Why do we have this why do we have this bad year? What's gone wrong? How can we be better? And being able to deliver those results and really articulate what went wrong and why, I think, is a key to any good CFO. And being able to kind of change your communication on the fly, I see that in the chat, and being able to kinda answer questions. I think a CFO, in front of a board, in front of management, you kinda have to have the the equivalent of a bulletproof vest. You're gonna get questions from all sides and being able to answer them. I know one of the problems I always had in industry was our development team, when I first got there, we didn't communicate well. And development would present numbers, and then finance would always go last, which was the worst spot in any board meeting because everybody just wants to be out of there. And we present numbers that didn't tie to development. And my CFO would have to answer questions on things he had no idea about. So then we worked for about 6 months to align our numbers so that every time they're presented, it was at least in unison or we knew where the differences were. So really being that adaptable, but that also means how do we forward thing? That just because something worked yesterday doesn't mean it works tomorrow. And I think a key to all this, and we have this slide in our first webinar, is what is that difference between that CFO and controller? And thinking about that chief future officer, this is if you take one thing away, I think it's this slide. To truly be that chief future officer, to be thinking about forecasting, to be thinking about tomorrow, to be thinking about the road forward, it's letting go of what I would consider those controller duties. That day to day accounting that I would say in the best possible scenario now I know that is not always allowed and able to at most nonprofits, but that best possible scenario is the CFO taking the finished reports, having faith in the numbers because they're the strong accounting team, and being able to objectively take a step back and analyze those numbers To be able to do that analysis, when you put those numbers together, you can't analyze. Being able to have, say, in financial ed, having your chart organized or such that when your controller says my our books are closed, you're printing your balance sheet and income statement directly from the system, and then you can just work to analyze it. I think that's the key takeaway is how can we get to that analysis point so that we can we can begin to look towards the future. So moving on to the next slide. I think Yael is gonna pick up from there and talk about kind of the different phases of a finance department and how that factors into a CFO's job. Yep. Thanks, Andrew. As you can see on the slide, in big organizations, these past, present, and future areas are usually part of are usually 3 different departments. Accounting, Treasury, and Financial Planning and Analysis. Accounting deals with reporting financial information and transactions accurately. The treasury department is responsible for managing the organization's financial resources, managing and optimizing cash flows, meeting financial obligations. And then financial planning and analysis is that future piece, and that includes evaluating trends, scenario planning, that can really help inform decisions that will impact the future of the organization. And when we talk about scenario planning, you know, you can think of dashboards and spreadsheets, but it also means, you know, what what if the what ifs. Right? What if the controller quits? What if the Internet, you know, in the whole world is down for a day, unexpectedly? Or what if there's a global pandemic? Right? So we wanna think about those things when you think about the future. And I recently heard on a podcast, unfortunately, I can't remember which one, but the guest was a CFO. And she was saying that the role of a CFO is to see around the corner. You wanna see around the corner of the organization, of the community, and of the world. So, obviously, you can't tell the future, but you can at least try to plan for what may be coming. And in smaller organizations, these areas of past, present, and future accounting, treasury, and FP and A generally fall under one accounting or finance department. And that's where we're really seeing organizations and CFOs utilize automation and technology because it's a lot for you to be overseeing all these areas. So where we can become more efficient with technology and automation to automate those those areas that are really manual right now and open up the time for you to have that, that real analysis and be able to do more meaningful meaningful analysis, meaningful reporting, that can help move your organization forward and to see around the corner. And on to the next slide. I'll pass it back to Andrew. Yeah. I think just to just to kinda reiterate is thinking about how these things come together. If you think about the past accounting is having good reporting to know, hey hey, what I've spent. And then you think about treasury and thinking about, okay, what's in my bank account today? And then thinking about that FP and A. What do I what do I know is in my AP, and what do I have to spend tomorrow? And I think the best CFOs, even at a basic level, thinking about tying all those together, I know what my history is, I know what I have today, and I know what's tomorrow. The most basic place to start when you're thinking about disbursements and payables, Think about what is that minimum amount I need in my bank account? Is it 1 month of payables? Is it 2 months of payables? Is it 2 cycles of payroll? And you know what, as long as I can pay bills from the month, that's what's gonna let me be safe. But you need to know kinda where you're starting the past and the future to pull out of that together to do that key that key planning. And I just wanted to bring that together. So that brings us to how do we how does one develop really that future mindset? And what are some things that even if you're not a CFO right now, thinking about your organization and how you operate, How can you move towards even having some of the structure and data even without the personnel to do some of these things? How can you we always say as we see more automation and you see the things even they're putting into like f e n x t as it moves to as they add module. What automation can we put in? So we're not doing data entry. We are doing that analysis. And how can I harness that analysis to really have that future mindset? So the first one, kinda simple, harnessing your data. And I think this is an important one especially at most non profits. We talk to so many non profits that don't realize how much data they have and how to use it. So taking a step back, let's think about accounting. I'm a CPA. That's that's where I started my career, so that's my first love. Where do the numbers come from and how are they being recorded? So I always say that when you think about a monthly close, what is what is your goal? Is it a 5 business day, 10 business day, 20 business day? We work with organizations where their goal is 60 business days. That gives me hives, but that's where they are. But thinking about it because I think when you think about your monthly close, it's a it's a push pull between timeliness and accuracy. That, okay, we wanna close in 5 business days. Am I gonna get all my credit card receipts from my management, from my CEO, from my COO? Am I gonna have my health insurance breakdown to accurately record that? Thinking about those things, what do I need to accrue for? What do I need to estimate to close my books within 5 business days? And then on the other hand, what do I wanna have accurate? The example I give is I was in microfinance in my nonprofit. And one of the things we would estimate was our credit card receipts. The people in the field we had the best system just wouldn't submit it. And I wanted to close in 5 days so we would just hit their department, and then the rest of the month is when we would chase them down. The thing I wouldn't estimate is our interest income from our portfolio. We would wait till the 4th business day to get that information to record that accurate. And that was a conversation within my department, with my CFO. Where are we gonna accrue and where are we gonna be a 100% accurate? Because we would close within 5 days and then the rest of the month we would be doing those things we accrued. We'd be truing them up the next month. So we knew where that push pull was in order to move it forward. And just being able to harness that data as an example to be able to kind of use it going forward to be able to get more accurate things timely data. I think I turn it back over to Yale to how to how to really embrace that technology as that next step. Yeah. Definitely. So the next tool is embracing innovation and technology. And one thing that will help you lead with an innovative mindset is to break up with Sally. And any of you former auditor friends in the audience might be familiar with Sally. Sally stands for same as last year, and it can be really tempting to stick with Sally. But you really don't wanna stay with her forever. It can be very inefficient and slow just to stick with the same process even though that's how you've always done it. So just getting used to the idea that you don't have to, keep doing things the same way and you can try to look for more efficient ways is the first step to becoming more efficient. Next, you'll want to map out your dream process flow. We've talked about this in previous webinars. If you can start from scratch, wave a magic wand, what would you want your process to look like? Even if you think it's impossible, you know, try to just think of what would the ideal process look like. Whether it's AP, reporting, what would make it as easy as Andrea likes to say, we can, be drinking margaritas on Friday afternoon at 3 o'clock. Right? What would the process look like if you would be doing that? And then the way to implement your dream process flow is to leverage one way is to leverage technology. And I know it can be difficult to convince, you know, your board or your any nonprofit management to invest in technology because, you know, you're spending on technology is not necessarily directly related to your mission, and we all know there's the stigma of overhead cost. But if you can take the time to think about the benefits that, you and the organization will get out of this investment, it might be easier to win this case. Right? For example, if you invest in any software, it can be an AP software, a new fund accounting software, budgeting, reporting software. And it if you know, it will give you more accurate, more readily available data. It might allow program staff to report on programs more quickly and easily. It might allow development to report on the impact of grants and donations. And it you know, you can get more accurate budget to actuals that will show where you can cut unnecessary spending. So articulating those potential benefits might help you get those other decision makers on board with this investment. Andrew, I know you have a lot to say about leveraging technology. Anything you wanna add there? Yeah. And I think and I'm I'm seeing a lot in the chat is one of the things that stuck out to me was, but Sally's efficient. And listen, I was an auditor. I ran my own accounting department. Sally can be efficient, but I think where we get complacent and where we see nonprofit get complacent is Sally can actually impede growth and change. That just because something works today, we work with a lot of organizations that have seen bigger donations in the past few years and have grown. And what worked as a $5,000,000 organization doesn't work as a $30,000,000 organization. And just to reiterate, Sally is same as last year. There's also another one called SWAG, Scientific Wild Something Guess. I've seen both on client work papers. But thinking about, yes, if it's not broke, don't fix it. But at the same time, being able to see, okay, if we doubled in size, would this process still work? If we have 30 corporate credit cards instead of 5, does our paper reconciliation process that works today work tomorrow? So thinking about those things, even though Sally can be efficient, can there be an investment in time and money to make things better? I think is key to think about before it's too late. If you hit the point where Sally doesn't work, you're already behind the 8 ball and you're gonna be playing catch up for for a long, long time, and thinking about that growth. I guess, yeah, we work with a lot of different clients. What is one area you've seen that really because I see a lot in the chat about where can we save money? Where can we make this investment? Where's one area you've seen that's an easy win for our clients in the field of technology? Yeah. I think recently, I've been seeing account accounts payable software is the most common place where nonprofits are investing. I think because it's, you know, it's still common for nonprofits to have tons of manual checks, paper invoices coming through a 1000000 different venues. Right? Coming in the mail, coming through email, department heads, emailing to the AP clerk, you know, paper expense reports, manual check request. So this really affects the entire organization. It affects your field and program staff. It affects your volunteers for reimbursements. So investing in accounts payable software can really help relieve that burden that affects the whole organization. So I think I think that's where we've been seeing it the most recently. And it definitely it definitely has an impact and and makes things more efficient and just easier easier to deal with. And then that's where just to chime in, I would, if you are a f e n x t user, that's this is where you bombard Garrett to see about the AP Automation and Payment Assistance that we've seen some of our clients new and I know Blackbaud's rolling it out to really start harnessing some of that. And the other thing I'll add there is when it comes to AI, it's really thinking about where it can help and then finding tools that already have it built in. Because I don't think any non profit is gonna be developing their own AI models, their own, kinda APIs and things. But there's so many tools out there that are already leveraging AI that are experts in the field and finding those I think really helps. Go on to the next slide. Alright. So the third tool we're gonna talk about is balancing short term and long term goals. It can be really hard to plan for the future when you have so many other priorities. Nonprofits are very often short staffed. You're probably just trying to get through your daily work. And how can you stay motivated to take on these big future oriented projects? So firstly, remember that in today's world, you really can't afford to not invest in automation and technology innovation. And, it's like it's like going down a up a down escalator. Right? If you stop moving forward, you're just gonna go backward. And the reality is that there is no good time for change. The longer you wait, the harder it's gonna be. We're always busy, unfortunately. So, the best time is now. At the same time, you want to be realistic with your expectations. Let's say you have a big project coming up such as a new fund account accounting software implementation. You know it's important, but your team still has their regular full time jobs. So you'll want to set those realistic expectations. When you set your go live date, take into account that you won't be working on this implementation full time. Bake into your timeline, your other deadlines, vacations, busy seasons, any audits coming up. And you'll also want to plan for bumps in the road. Implementations and any projects that have a lot of moving parts rarely go exactly as planned, unfortunately. So plan buffer buffer time into your project plan and timeline for those unexpected challenges. And a timely relevant reminder of this is, the Dodgers have the best record in baseball this year. And I say this begrudgingly as a Yankees fan. They are 3 and o in the world series right now. So, you know, everyone will agree they're pretty successful. But they actually lost 40% of the games in the season. That sounds pretty bad. Right? They failed 40% of the time. But they're the best team in baseball right now. So I think it's similar with these long term projects that it's pretty normal for challenges to come up. You know, you might fail at one little piece of the project. But as long as you, you know, get to that world series, get to your implementation go live, you can still reach your goal successfully just getting through those bumps. Anything to add there, Andrew? No. I I I'm not a Yankees fan, so I'm gonna refrain from talking to everybody in the next slide. So I think a big thing, and this has been kind of a theme when it comes into kind of all of our webinars and it's probably, something I've taken to heart and I took to heart with other nonprofit is that collaboration and communication. I think sometimes coming into finance, especially the nonprofit where you have people growing through the program and being promoted up, they don't always understand what finance is looking for. But that doesn't mean what they have to say is not helpful. And I think fostering that collaboration and communication really works to build this out properly. And I think I am probably and, yeah, I will probably laugh when I say this. I tend to bulldoze people sometimes, but also being able to take that step back and going, okay. I might think I know what's right, but I'm not in the person in the field that needs to upload the credit card receipts. I'm not the person in the field as a health care worker having to enter my mileage at a moment's notice to make sure I get reimbursed for it. So I think thinking about how to bring in all the departments, having a clear strategic plan for the organization, having that communication, making people feel involved, whether it's a survey, whether it's bringing having open office hours about a strategic plan, having lunch and learns, really will build that collaboration. And then when you do start making changes and looking towards the future, it really makes more people have ownership, and it makes that CFO's job easier if they're not the only ones thinking about tomorrow. Because I think what we see is a lot of program people, margins are thin, they are operating on shoestring budgets, they are all about how to move today and get people paid today and support the mission today. But having them as part of that conversation of how to adjust for tomorrow, I think is really key here and thinking about that cross communication and elaboration. So that'll bring us to our 2nd poll. So you've heard some of our kind of things to talk about, things to do. So which areas would you thinking about this developing a future focus mindset do you wanna focus on in your organization? And I know not everybody on this call has the ability to shape where the organization goes, but thinking about where they wanna go, I think is key. We'll let that that poll stay open and I'll come back to the results in a little bit, but I'm gonna keep moving on. So you've heard kind of what we think that CFO is, how some of the things that can be done today, tomorrow, 3 months from now. So now how do we bring that reality to a vision? How do you work to get to that chief future officer? Because I think a lot of nonprofits today is really it's focused on today. How do we get today? How do we get to pay our bills today? How do we get through payroll this week? How do we get through the board meeting? How do we get through our audit? Unfortunately, we still have to keep auditors happy. Can't go back from that. So really thinking about how to bring that vision to reality is kinda what we wanna hammer home as we as we round out this webinar. Yeah. And I think it brings together a lot of things we've talked about already today. When you're thinking about the future, first of all, you'll wanna identify the key areas for change. Right? There's so many things that you might want to change right now, but what are your top priorities? What are the key things that you're gonna focus on first? And also think about what would success look like when all is said and done. What do you want right coming back to that dream process? What do you want your department to look like, once you implement whatever your ideas are? And then once you start, you'll wanna set measurable goals. Right? Make sure that you can, the milestones are achievable, timeline is realistic, and then you'll wanna keep evaluating how things are going. Do we need to change any of this plan? And like Andrew was saying before, you know, don't bulldoze processes. Right? You wanna engage the stakeholders across the organization. So I think it's a balance between not bulldozing processes, and then, Sally. Right? Same as last year. Some some of you were saying that Sally is efficient. And sometimes you're doing you've been doing things the same way for years because there's a reason. Right? So you don't wanna come in, bulldoze the process, and then there was actually a piece of that process that was super important, and you just didn't know. And it looked like it was really, you know, strange and inefficient and duplicative to be doing that piece of the process, but there was actually a good reason for it. So that's the piece of engaging the stakeholders. Who's involved in this process? Who is it going to affect when when we're changing this process? And and make sure that, you know, you're here listening to them, hearing their opinions. Obviously, you know, you can't have everyone help make the decision, but at least have them, involved and feel like their voices were heard. And going back, you know, consistently evaluate evaluate your progress, and then ensure that you're as you go on, that you're aligned with your overall goals. Anything to add there, Andrew? And I think there when you're thinking about a road map for the future, I think it's and I see a lot of it going on in the chat. It's okay. What is my 2 things I think come into mind. What is our capacity? If I am a one person shop and I am doing everything, I'm sorry you're going through that, Shelley. But what is my capacity, and can I plan for the future? Do I need to just have? There is no pause button. If I had a pause button on life, unfortunately, I would not be sitting here. As much as I love giving these webinars, I'd be probably on a beach somewhere with a margarita in hand. But can I take a day? Is there somebody like a Forest Mazars or somebody I can just sit for a day and kinda bounce ideas off of? Sometimes that's all it takes to kinda spur what can be better. I always say to my clients, if you've ever thought I can do this better, there probably is a better way. Now everything comes with a cost, whether it's time or money. But I think there are so many options out there to help organizations like the ones that I've spoke to since I've started working with Blackbaud that no matter what your budget is, we can usually find something that will make your life easier. I I talked to so many softwares out there that talk to FE, that talk to RE, and then I get to that pricing conversation. And I've had a few where I went, can you just say that a few more times because I think you forgot some zeros? And I'm more than happy to tell you in a separate email which ones those are, and they're partners in Blackbaud. But it's just there are companies out there that wanna help you, and they wanna make your lives better. So just think about that. Like, if you can find those even those 15 minutes a day, I know our team, we just have random calls where we're just like, hey, let's just brainstorm. It's a Friday at 3. There's stuff to do, but, like, the juices are flowing. Let's just throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. If you come up with 5 ideas, maybe one is that one that'll supercharge your organization. I think the other thing to think about is when we think about resources is really thinking about when you're thinking about that future planning and making these changes, being that laying out that strategic plan is figuring out not only what doesn't work, but what does what does work. Because you don't wanna throw out processes that do work without figuring out why they work and working to make them better. I think that's key in everything we do. I think our team is very unique and I think there are a lot of consultants out there that always come with something to sell. And while I do need to make a living and I have people to answer to, my job when I go into nonprofit is to fix what you already have. I have been on the other side of the table. I have been sitting in a webinar like this going, well, they're not gonna spend any money on accounting because I get my reports done and no one I might yell for automation, but no one cares because my job gets done. But there are ways to usually fix what you have. And our first goal is to really come in, and we always say every problem in a non profit is usually falls into 1 of 3 buckets. People process their systems. Now I've worked with the non nonprofits to know I have never met a nonprofit accounting and finance department that's overstaffed. So it's almost never people. It usually comes down to process and systems. And I think, Sarah, you put it in the chat somewhere, but there's so much going on I lost it. Is that sometimes it's not your system that's not working, it's the process that maybe, hey. We did something 5 years ago, but now the system's changed, and what we did didn't work. But it's not the system's fault. It's the fact that our it's our process's fault. The example I give is we have an organization that had a lot of affordable housing. So they have a lot of women's shelters around New York City. And what that comes with is a lot of electric bills and utility bills and water bills. And what happens what was happening was all those bills had to go through their normal approval process, which was 4 people. So you would get an $82 water bill for a women's shelter, and 4 people, including the COO, would have to sign off. And routinely, those bills would get delayed and the water or the electricity would get shut off. This was not a system problem. This was a process problem. I eventually said, hey. Can we just set up using your accounts payable system you have a threshold that if it's under $500 for a utility bill, let's just pay it. The last thing we need is the water getting shut off at a women's shelter on a Saturday afternoon. So really thinking about, how we can build these and how how we can bring in some of these tools we're thinking about to really plan out the future because I think to be that chief future officer, you need automation. You need to bring in systems that are using that. Even even on it's basic level OCR technology. How can we get our paper into a system without can keying everything? How can I import my journal entries? And then the next step is how can I use AI to really bring that out and really work with the data I have rather than fighting with my data to get it in the system? Those those those would be my tips. Anything else to add there, Yael? Yeah. I would just add that, you know, sometimes there's low hanging fruit that you don't need a whole new software to change to, to be able to change the process. Right? I remember one client, in order to get when you talk about the development and finance department communication. Right? There's a lot of often a lot of issues there. And the way that the development department would find out about any wire, incoming wires that came in, the staff accountant would send out an email every week of all the wires that came in. And then whoever knew what each wire was, they would send an email back, and you can just imagine the mess of an email chain. Right? In order to book these wires and for development to know what donations were coming in, it was a disaster. So the simple change that we made was just make a shared Google sheet. The staff accountant would put in the deposits every day, and then the development team would come in and, you know, say what the designation was, who it came from, and everyone was on the same page. So that might not be your ultimate, you know, process, but it can fix it now and just eliminate that back and forth email that was causing people a lot of a lot of stress. So that's just one example where you can, you know, look for that low hanging fruit and try to implement some changes that are possible today. Right? And I think when it comes to that is that low hanging fruit that sometimes we run into. And I know we go back and watch our archive of our last webinar that dealt with change management. And I think a lot of nonprofits have either had a lot of bad change in the past or are just adverse to change and thinking about, okay, are there minor tweaks we can make today that are gonna make people's life better that really just kind of get buy in to actually changing and working towards the future. I think it all comes back to kind of that change management and being able to be flexible and be able to predict things. So that kinda brings us to our next slide. So where to start? And I think the key we wanna have around here is I think we've talked a lot about how as finance leaders, how we can change the finance department and what changes I can make to my my accounting and finance to make things better. But it doesn't just stay in finance. It really can grow throughout an organization. And so we're just gonna go kinda 1 by 1 and just talk about that. So development. Thinking about your development team. First things first, am I using FE? If I'm using FE NXT and I'm using RE NXT, are they connected? That's that's where I'd start. That's where any conversation starts when we find out people are using both systems. Because we find a surprising number of people haven't connected the system. And there's always reasons for it, but there's always a way around those reasons. The data doesn't map. The I don't want the data in there that because I haven't approved it. And I know I we've been talking to them and they're a great partner. I know Maddox out there that does a lot of work in helping helping teams kind of convert the data from development speak to finance speak. But also, this doesn't have to be a system thing. I know one of the biggest problems I had when I was in an when I was at a nonprofit was, what is the definition of commitment from a development side versus finance side? And I think thinking through what those common definitions are between the two groups will help with some of this reconciliation, will help with some of these different data sources that if we know what commitment means for accounting, that development is not gonna market as committed in RE or your CRM until it meets that accounting definition, which is gonna be different than somebody picking up the phone and saying, I'm gonna give $20,000 because they wanna celebrate that as they should. But until that check comes in or I get a signed agreement, I'm not putting that on my accounting books. Also working with development to have that revenue forecasting and thinking about how to move forward and being able to predict when money comes in. Like I said, like we know, we know nonprofits money is at a premium. How we pay bills, how we do things is at a premium. So to be able to predict that cash flow when it's coming in, I think is key. And while I'm doing this, I'm gonna launch the 3rd poll question so we get it in under the the time. I spurred that on Sarah, so I'm sure she'll launch it soon. Which office of your organization do you need to engage with the most to become future minded? And I'll be interested to see the results. I'm gonna pop back to the slide. The poll is open though. Where's the arrow? There it is. So thinking about going back to how can we work with IT. Does IT have control of all our softwares? We go into so many so many nonprofits where IT has no idea what developments purchase, what programs it purchase. Is there a centralized list for everything we've paid for? Thinking about your program, do your program people have budgets? Do we have vendor relationships across various programs that if we brought them together, we'd get some spending power? We'd have better quality. Do we have grant tracking? Are we able to if my program people ask, hey. What's the budget on this grant? How much do we spend? Am I using my segments and project codes in FE to pull that report at a moment's notice? Do I have it well? Do I have things set up to get my reporting? Or when my program team asks for a report, I know I'm spending 6 hours in Excel pulling things out of the general ledger. Because that's the moment where we go, there has to be a better way to do this. Let's get on it. And then working with human resources. Do we have payroll automated? I saw somebody in the chat trying to automate some of that payroll. Who has to approve? Is it coming over from the system into our general ledger and automatically posting? I know a lot of my nonprofits where they spend a lot of time is allocating those salaries across programs and grants. Thinking about how to use it. And then also just also planning. Have or have you done FTE planning? Are you using people? Are you using kind of that position control? How are you planning out salaries, benefits, but also just headcount and working with HR to do that? Yo, anything you would add here about kinda where to start? We go to a lot of organizations. Is there some place that we we dig everything, but is there some place you would you would start if you were just given the keys? I think going back to that development piece is probably the easiest, the easiest place to start. But I think it really depends on the organization. I think the people in the organization will know when you ask them, you know, where where should we start, where are our biggest, miscommunications, where do we need to get get more aligned and get on the same page. And I think that I see in the chat that, some people it's and it goes back to that communication that we can't change and be that chief future officer because either legal or programs doesn't want us to change. And I think that's one of the things our group specializes in is helping organizations understand that there is a better way and helping to road map and prioritize. I've talked to so many of you throughout the CFO series. And most of the things we end up in is, hey, we're gonna help you map out what you're doing today and give you that road map and future state. So that a, you can go to your board and say, hey, invest in admin cost. And b, have a timeline and have a plan so you're not just wildly spending. Let's create that integrated system environment to get that automation. We only have 1 or 2 people in our finance office. So how can we use AP Automation and OCR technology to just get our bills in a system? And thinking about how do we use dashboarding and automatic reporting so that we're not bogged down in Excel. Thinking about how we can streamline our reconciliations, I think is key. Yeah. And Andrew, I see some people in the chat talking about, the challenge of moving from database view to to the web view. And I think one thing you can do, going back to that long short term versus long term goals, just set some time to train, you know, take some trainings, learn the system when you don't know it. It's a lot harder and a lot more scary. But once you get to know and take those trainings, you'll it you'll hopefully find that it's a lot easier and a lot more efficient. And the other thing, if you if let's say you're on board with, you know, moving to FBNXT, but you have staff that aren't, you can just talking to those staff find out where their issues are going back to listening. Where why are they, you know, resistant to this change. Just listening will hopefully make them more accepting, more open to change because they see that you're listening to them, you know, taking into account their problems. Then maybe you can work with them and figure out why are they resistant and what can we do to help that transition. And then the other thing I'd say, and I we actually heard this from I I forget who it was, but maybe they're on this webinar that they challenged their staff. Start the day in web view. Once you hit something you can't do, spend 15 minutes trying to do it if you can't, then jump into the database view, and the next day start over. And I think that's she saw more uptake because people were trying. And I think, Colleen, I see in the chat that you said, web view is good for viewing, database is good for doing. So I would go back to, okay, what are you doing in database view? Are these things that we can automate so that we're not doing data entry and we get to that analysis and that being able to plan for the future rather than being bogged down? So thinking about what am I doing that I'm calling doing? Can I move away from that using some form of tool or something that that isn't that I don't know? And I'd say that's where the team at Blackbaud is, I think, is great is they're they're adding so much. And I know, Sarah, you've been talking about in the chat that there's gonna be the product updates. There were so much unveiled at bbcon when I was there that I couldn't even take enough notes That it might even be worth calling up your account rep and going, hey, can you just go over some new features so I know what the system can do? Because I think a lot of us, especially in a nonprofit, keep our head down and it's really hard to think about that future. But you also don't know what you don't know. And so I think discovering what the system can do might unlock something in your brain. So really what we covered, hopefully, we've kind of helped you plot a course for that chief future officer thinking about the future, thinking about that automation, thinking about the key is to get to that data analysis. Let's get away from the day to day data entry. Let's get to that analysis. We had some ways that you even if you're not a CFO, you can maybe start thinking about that future focused plan. And then just some tips on where to start. Anything you would add, Gail, before we kinda wrap up here today? No. I think we've covered it. It's just it's great to see everyone in the chat engaging and yeah. I've had a really great time here. So I think we covered the important things. And I think just if you take, you know, 1 or 2 points from this webinar, obviously, it's hard to remember everything. But whatever stuff stood out to you, you know, maybe make a note, put a sticky note on your on your laptop, and try to just take one, you know, one takeaway that you can implement, into the the upcoming days. Yeah. I think we have a few questions. So then I go through them. If there's more questions, if you I'm I'm you wanna put them over in that q and a section. That way if we don't get to them, we can always send out an email response. And I think we're just gonna move to the closing polls that are gonna be launched. So that's just if you'd like follow-up by the Blackbaud team about anything we spoke about or you saw in the chat, or if you'd like follow-up with Yell and myself about how we can help you. Like I said, we are a we have our friends, like our friends at Blackbaud, but we are also a system agnostic team. So if you feel like, hey. I just need somebody with fresh eyes to help me come in and map out what I'm doing today or chart that roadmap, we're more than happy to help. Our goal is to find ways to work with you guys. So the chat, is there a benchmark of tech spending versus total budget for an NFP? It there isn't. There is no benchmark. It kind of depends on kind of what your nonprofit looks like. Are you in a growth stage? Are you somewhere that you've been, you've been stagnant? And it also kind of depends on management and the board. We're seeing a lot more nonprofits kind of turn over their boards in the past 2 or 3 years, and there are different board members, younger board members, who kind of look at the reporting they're getting, start asking questions, and it's like the data is not available. So then we see a lot more of the spending in those organizations versus some older ones where it's kinda hard because you have your programs and you're operating on a shoestring budget, and I can hire 3 more case workers or put in a new accounting system. Almost always you're gonna choose to hire those case workers. So sometimes it's hard. We do see a lot of organizations that are a lot of tech focused grants for capacity building. So I would take a look at that if you if you are somebody who wants to invest talk to management, talk to the board, and we can also help make that case of hey if you don't do this now you're gonna have a lot of problems. The other question we got is going back to when we talked about that kind of push pull between, accuracy and timeliness when it comes to accounting. If you're accruing things and going back and fixing fixing them aren't you really doing things too much? Aren't you touching your general ledger too much and reversing things and adding them? I think it comes down to I would say that's fine. Coming from my old auditor days, coming from a controller day who was very high volume, low dollar amount transaction. I think having a set process where you know what's being reversed and you know what's being added, as long as you're able to document it, I don't think there is too much when it comes to those accruals and reversals and getting it right. But there's that timeliness. Like, I just know my board wanted financials within 5 business days. I did not have a choice about whether I would be perfect. So kind of thinking about what are our goals and can we get to decent numbers using historical, using some summary data we have. What can we do in 5, 10 business days? What can we produce? Is that useful to the organization? So I think as long as you have a plan and it documented, I wouldn't be afraid of those kind of accruals and reversals. Anything else to add there, Yael? No. I think you covered it. I see I still see a lot in the chat about, you know, FBNXT WebView and database view. And I think just look forward to what's coming. A couple weeks ago, I thought I couldn't run a query in the in, the WebView. And then I checked and I was able to. And it looks you know, it's pretty easy. So just continue to keep checking like Andrew said. Start out in web view, and then if you really can't do it, go back to database view. Alright. So, Sarah Sarah, anything to wrap up with? Yeah. I just have a few reminders for everybody. On that note, we have our next product update briefing in November. It's on 14th at 1 PM. I put a link in the chat and pinned it to the top. So for those of you that are FE NXT users and you have questions about what's coming and when, we'll be talking through that more. I got a sneak peek today of all of the stuff they're launching, and it's I say this every time, but it's really exciting. And there's a number of things in there that I've seen people ask for a lot. So I think it will be heartening to everybody, so, please sign up for that. Again, there's a link in the chat. And then our next session in this series is gonna be on SMART Strategies for Succession Planning, and that is on December 10th. So we've got a month gap, before we do that one, so you can go ahead and sign up. And on that registration page, if you scroll down, there are links to the first two sessions in the series, so you can go watch those. The last thing that I have to ask of everybody is if you have an idea for something you'd like us to discuss in this series, we would love any ideas. I've seen AI come up a few times. Would love some more specificity around that. If you have particular questions or concern, that would really help Andrew and I shape that conversation so that it's a good use of everyone's time because there's a lot of talk about AI right now, and we would like to know what direction you want us to go in. So I think that's everything. Really appreciate everybody's time and great engagement today. And if you have questions, feel free to email myself, Andrew, Yale, or, or Garrett. Thank you so much, everybody. Bye. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.