 Welcome. Thanks for joining us here. Another episode of the nonprofit show, but unlike any others that we've had. Those of you joining us listening, you are missing our very vibrant costumes. So we're all dressed to the nines. We are embracing the scary, messy, frightening episode that we have here today. So The three of us are wearing fantastic costumes, I think. And yeah, really excited for that. So we're, we're all in Again, today we're talking with Justine Townsend CPA, also manager at your part time controller. We often refer to them as YPTC and she's here to share solutions for the messiest and scariest Solutions. So we're going to dive in here shortly. But before we do, we want to remind you who we are. So Julia, take it away, my friend. So, you know, I was telling to Justine, a lot of folks think that Jared and I, you know, socialize and know each other. We are, we socialize every day on camera and have now for three years, but we don't really see one another in the community as much One pandemic hello and then two, we're just doing different things. So I got to witness Jared ransom at work this weekend as the emcee for the NPH Gala. And we got this picture really quickly right as we were going into the ballroom. Jared, talk to us about what happened because something really magical happened and it wasn't just because of Halloween. Yeah, no, we raised $333,000 600 and I think 19 And this was $100,000 more than they've ever raised at this event before. So congratulations. Yeah. It was really great, really exciting to see Jared there and watching her work through the room. It was not an easy room because of technology and just the way the room is set up. But wow, I was so proud of you. You just did a beautiful job and, you know, we know you as a nonprofit nerd Day in and day out, but you really do this amazing work. And so I just wanted to call out that. Thank you. It was fun, Julia, to see you in the audience. I I locked eyes with you several times because I knew that I had a friendly face that I could I could connect with. So it was so I was so glad to have you there. And yes, Julia Patrick CEO American nonprofit Academy and myself, you're a nonprofit nerd. So even though you shamed me and called me out walking across the ballroom with with two glasses of wine. Yeah, I didn't say your name, though. I thought about it. Oh man, get to your seat, put that wine glass down. That's right. Yeah. And we also want to say thank you to our amazing presenting sponsors your part time controller being one of them. We also want to give a shout out to Bloomerang American nonprofit Academy Fundraising Academy at National University be generous staffing boutique nonprofit thought leader as well as the nonprofit nerd. These companies have kept us Growing and growing. And if you missed any of our episodes, you know where to find them. If not, that's okay. I'm going to remind you Roku YouTube Amazon fire TV as well as Vimeo. And if that's not scary enough, you can also listen to us On podcast form. So tune in to the nonprofit show wherever you stream your podcast. We're there for you. Hey, you know, just as Justine Townsend CPA part managing. I was luck. Let me step back up manager. Thank you. Yeah. At your part time controller. Justine, you're coming to us from Houston. And when we first had you on last year, you were the manager of kind of the Houston market. A lot has happened in one year. Talk to us about that, sister. Alright, so we grew and we grew and we grew right like you see got bigger and bigger and bigger and Now we're nationwide and our little Houston market is all of Texas, all of Oklahoma, all of Arkansas and all of Louisiana. So that we can reach a lot more people and why PTC is now nationwide anywhere and we're going international. We've got Our arts and culture, which is my specialty. We've got a conference coming up in Sydney, Australia. So we're going really international very soon. It's really exciting. I love that. Well, you know, we need to go and with you and broadcast from there because Oh, 100% that is that would be amazing. Well, congratulations. I mean, this has really been a fun partnership to have. And then when we asked you to come on air and and bring your Halloween spirit, you jumped right in. And so we were like the best super excited. So why PTC for a bunch of Accountants, you guys are fun. We're fun. We're the fun accountants. A lot of fun. A lot of fun. But now we've got to talk about some of the scary things it is Halloween. And you are going to talk to us about the scary, scary, scary thing that's going on right now with staff and talent turnover. This has been huge. I mean, I'm sure everyone has noticed this right, we've had this great resignation. And so we've had huge turnover. It's very expensive for organizations. We've got high turnover with eds. In fact, what it was at 60% of nonprofit employees say they're burnt out right now and for executive directors that numbers over 75%. So as we're seeing those eds roll and turn over, it can be super scary because you have nobody at the helm, you've got internal controls and processes that that person once filled in that are now who's filling in that role, who's going to take care of this. And we've had this huge rush to hire and to replace as soon as possible so that you don't have, you know, nothing happening. And instead what you can get sometimes is a bad fit or a bad hire because people feel rushed and don't want to take their time and find the right person. I think I'll call that a bad apple today. Oh, yeah, that's right. Bobbing for bad apples. Yeah, that's what it can feel like right now. We're trying to hire can feel like bobbing for bad apples. I mean, when you think about just in our, you know, for accountants, right. So for accountants that shortage is, you know, the overall employment rate is 3.7%. But for accounts, it's less than 1%. It's 0.9%. So if you have a CFO leave or a controller leave, then you're going to have to take some time to fill that position and your best option is to hire a coach. Which cannot be super collaborative right when you think about nonprofits and how they tend to work in a community. Yeah, a lot of turnover I know we're seeing it here in our community Julia we've heard it you know, day in and day out from our leaders just like you just justine across the nation and international. Which is that is really scary and the cost it takes and the time it takes the intensity and then the culture shake up right like there's just so much that happens in that. And what we're seeing is that by the time. So people turn to us to outsource right so that CFO position can be left open for a long time before we get in there that controller position could could have been left open for a long time. So what we're seeing is either they tried to fill the hole with about a higher and then what we go in is we have to then unwind a really messy scary situation right where you're trying to figure out what was this person thinking. Why did they do it that way and what were they trying to do, or you have where you've got months and months of nothing having been done. So bank recs haven't been completed and that can get into some really scary high fraud risk situations right. Yeah. So if, if this happens to you and you have that turnover, then you want to get an outsource solution into those positions as soon as possible and not wait. Yes, fill the position but it can take a long time right now and the cost is super high can take because 200% of an ED salary to replace them. Wow. The cost of the organization. I mean you think about that 200% of an ED salary is the cost of the organization for a year. Now we love data and we love stats and we usually think the data and stats are sexy. That is not a sexy stat. That is frightening. Keeping on theme today. Super scary. You can also have where you have EDs who signed a grant or who signed an award letter or who know when things are due, when you're supposed to be reporting especially in smaller nonprofits. They're holding a lot in their head. So it can be super scary if you have big turnover without getting all the information out of their head before they leave. But let's talk about that. Let's talk about the grants and you know if we don't have infrastructure what that looks like because just as you said that ties into the turnover in Julia we've heard it throughout these three years right. Yeah, how many videos have been holding on and holding on and holding on from their retirement to say okay I'll stay with you through this, and then it just turns into year one year two year three. So we are having turnover for many reasons, very many, you know reasons, but talk to us about the messy situation for grant wins without infrastructure. This has been a big messy scary situation this past year because we have all of that wonderful cares act money and and ARPA money the American Rescue Plan Act. So you've got a lot of infrastructure money coming out and you've got big money for organizations who are filling community needs so they get this huge windfall. And it can be very exciting and it sounds like good news to get all of this money but you don't have the systems in place to track the restrictions and to track the spending on those grants. You can get into some really messy scary situations with your funders, not being able to properly report on those, especially it qualifies for a single audit the scariest. I'm shaking in my boots for sure. So nonprofit nerd environments. Yeah, that is so scary that the structure that goes into that because you're right a lot of this is held in someone's head. They're gone. It's not in a donor database right their grant award isn't it's nowhere to be found. So I'm just going to go back to those relationships justine because my first thought is, these are contractual agreements. We have to do what it said we would do. But if all this turmoil is taking place. How do we manage that relationship. Well we want to make sure that before someone leaves we get as much information out of their head as we can, especially any deadlines or connections relation those kinds of. I know any a the national endowment for the arts, switching over who gets their doctor who gets their communications can take six weeks, just to switch over who's getting the correct email. So making sure that you put in all of those requests so that information is coming to who's left at the organization after that person leaves can really help. And if they leave without that information, reach out, reach out to the funders and ask, can I get a copy of this grant I know we have it and I'm sorry but we had turnover. Can I get a copy of that award letter we want to make sure that we're being compliant and I know that may sound like a scary thing to ask for. But you want it's it's it's reflecting that you want to be compliant so it's actually going to reflect nicely on you and not badly on you like you might be afraid. I love that and thank you because my first thought is, tuck your tail, put your head down right and just like, just, I don't, I don't know like ask for forgiveness. Well, that is that is honoring compliance that is honoring, you know the contractual agreement and the compliance so thank you for reframing that honestly. To me is really embarrassing, you know, for any organization for any leader I'm sure, but to come to it as we want to maintain integrity, and we want to maintain compliance. That's a big deal. And I will say this about funders. They are better at giving you an extension than granting forgiveness for having missed a deadline. So if you are proactive and you find out when your deadlines are and you find out it's tomorrow, it's easier to ask for an extension than it is to ask for forgiveness on a missed deadline. Really good advice. Really good advice. And I think you know, it goes to, we've talked about this a lot on the show. It goes to the concept of having an open relationship that are or return on a relationship. And the program talks about all the time and that, you know, we've got to be navigating this to a much healthier degree than we are. Right. Well in the partnerships, you know, like, there, there's been a lot of conversation with turnover at all different levels and I believe strongly in direct and transparent communications. So how are we connecting with them and communicating that justine I think that's a big piece of it. 100% and being proactive in those communications right. So what do you have in your donor database what information do you have in there what contact information do you have what relationships can you transition before someone who has those relationships leaves, being proactive when there is that turnover and then being proactive when you get a grant. Read the compliance requirements and sit down and say, Okay, what do we feel like we can't do on here what do we need to help with. And then say, Okay, who's the right person to ask and go out and look in your network. Who which one of your peer organizations has maybe had a grant like this. Could you reach out to them. How did you handle this how did you handle the tracking for this right. Making sure you're tracking those things up front will change everything is trying to fix it on the back end. Oh, they can always tell. There's been a lot of organizations and we've talked about this with a guest that has seen severe increase in their, in their, you know, dollar amount they're operating budget and they've just really increased the amount of revenue that they're working with. Well that also increases, how you report it that accounting infrastructure right, especially if any of this is reimbursed grants and you know you have to do a certain amount of reporting a certain amount of you know all of this compliance piece and then you get the money. There's a lot that goes into this and that infrastructure for the grants is a really critical piece. And I love that you called out. There's a lot of other community partners. No one said that. It's like, no, we can't ask for help, we can't tell someone that we don't know how to do this, or, you know, we're not going to call out our insufficiencies or ineffectiveness, but I love that you, you said yes do this partner with someone, because other organizations in your community have likely received similar funding, and they had to figure it out so why not. And you can look up who's gotten what money if you're not sure you can always go to candy and look up. You know used to be guide star but we can look up anybody's 990s right so we can say this is a group I'm friends with this ED or I'm friends with this development director. I know them let me see if they have similar funding go check out their 990 if you're too embarrassed to reach out and assume that they have that kind of funding. Another piece is to make sure that your chart of accounts is set up for that tracking so that you can do the financial reporting because that is the big one that we always see, which is cool you got this grant and we're here to help you on the back end, get the audit. It's like okay yeah but you weren't ever tracking it correctly the whole time so now we're going to redo a whole year worth of accounting to get out of having to do that it's better to ask for that help on the upfront right. Yeah, I'll say this is an outsource service we're a lot cheaper. If you ask us ahead of time that if you ask us how to fix it right versus how to fix it is a lot cheaper how to do it. Well I'm curious where does the board fit in all of this right like the board they're the governing body the fiduciary agents and so where do we fit with the board, because it can be frightening. There's a board that's either over engage or under engage talk to us about this justine. Okay, so when I think about boards I think of the Goldilocks and the three bears right. So you can have, you can have a board that is like Papa bears porridge to hot, because they don't know what to focus on and they're very aware that they have a fiduciary duty they tend to focus on everything. So if you have a set of financials at the board meeting, and they're digging in on why your office applies this much and, and how much do we spend on paper clips and is that a good use of their time, absolutely not that's a terrible use of their time and yours honestly, providing those explanations right. So if you have the right set of financials so that you can focus them in the right direction and you can give them a job to do, and say, you know what that's great. So we focus on this big picture issue outside of office applies actually occupancy rates are what we really need to look right and look at. Could you look at our occupancy and comparable rents across the community and the next year is our lease comes up giving them a chance to focus on really helps with a board that's too hot and then you can have a board that's too cold like mama bears porridge right. They don't know what to focus on so they don't focus on anything they're scared to mess it up. They need to be invited and they need to be you got to talk to them and find out what's your specific talent what your specific skill what your specific skill is and invite them to the table, and then you have those board members who are like baby bears porridge right and they're just right they know exactly when to connect you to the funders they know and they know exactly when to jump in and say I have a lawyer friend that we can get pro bono and they know when to say, Oh, I know this person is really wanting to fund something like that let me do an introduction right you can have board members that are focused on just the right thing. Oh, and that is the dream right all to be baby bears. That is the dream. I love it. Well it is frightening to think about how we have these boards that are as Jared mentioned you know they are the fiduciaries. They have so much power and insight, except when they don't just seems like it is such a tough thing. So I love love love that you brought this up. You know justine, you know I love hearing this from you being that you're a CPA. It really reinforces how important the board is to these financial issues that we we tend to think oh that's a board issue oh that's an operations issue. Talk to us a little bit about how we can get our boards to understand more about what they're seeing when they get these reports because I feel like they get stymied and maybe they need some education and I'm wondering. Oh, so one of the things I love to do is when I'm presenting financials to board. I always watch their eyes. When do I lose them right plays over and they check out right and that's okay that's the thing we need to focus on educating them with. And then when we're presenting information to board members we want to meet them where they are right. So we want pictures words and numbers because that's not everybody's going to look at your set of pictures and know what the heck that means and you've got to meet your board where they are so that you can get the most out of them right and help them to contribute the most because that's why they're there you want to give them all the good good feelings all those worms and fuzzies are the reason they're there. So if you have board members whose eyes are glazing over well then that maybe is something you want to do some data visualization you want to do some pictures on that right. So we've got a board member who really understands it when you write it out for them and they follow up with emails every time we'll get an executive summary do a memo right out what happened right. These are the key areas here are my headlines. So between pictures and numbers and then the numbers or if you dump your entire chart of accounts and every single account on your financial straight out of the system. Inviting them down the rabbit holes right so you have to help direct the board members eyes to what they should be looking at and making sure that the information we're presenting is not just at the right level for them that just right baby bear level of financial information but also the just right communications. Are we saying it in words are we saying it in pictures are we saying it in numbers and are we telling the same story and in a way that they can understand this is the story of the organization. This is the financial story. I'm sorry I'm a real nerd when it comes to financial storytelling. I mean that's what we do right. We're financial storytellers. Well and why he has a data visualization team and we've had some of those nerds on and I say that lovingly guys know that tell us a little bit about if you if you can the data visualization that why PTC provides and can provide. I can get really nerdy on this one because I love it. Do you need these. Just add another layer onto this. This whole entire situation. But we have in our data visualization group. We have the ability to create mobile dashboard so on your phone you can have an app. We're executive directors and board members can say how much cash is in the bank today. What are the big issues they get we can figure out what kind of dashboard they should have we can have a live dashboard on their website. We can put together all kinds of data all kinds of graphs we can do KPIs we can do whatever financial operational you want to see a picture we can make a picture for you. I mean I am so impressed with that team. It's amazing the work that they can do. I mean there's some really cool examples on the website if anybody is curious that are just really neat that you can go play around with. I'm like super into the dashboard thing. I just think that is like such an important thing and I think to your point justine about how we can become overwhelmed by what we think is a data dump and then we're you know trying to figure all these things out. The dashboard really allows us to have a consistent amount of information so that we can track that story. Focus right. It also helps because it says this is what we've all together as a team identified as our key metrics. This is what we all agree we should be paying attention to so you don't have board members going. I don't know what I'm supposed to be looking at over here. Right. Right. Our asking questions not not feeling comfortable asking questions we've learned Julian correct me if I'm wrong. It's about 18 months for a new board member to feel comfortable and confident in asking questions. And I don't know about the two of you but I don't think any organization can wait 18 months for a board member to feel comfortable to speak up. No we can't. It's dangerous and you know that's per board members so think about it. You if you are always having people coming in and going off that is a perpetual amount of disarray and chaos where you are not bringing the great leadership minds to the table. And I tell you what I do when I've got a new board member that has not heard the spiel before I will call them out by name in that board meeting and say you've not heard this before or you're not familiar with this let me explain this to you. And then invite them specifically do you have any questions about this since it's the first time you were seeing and then keep kind of inviting them to the table. And I have found that that specific invitation to ask questions and to engage really helps rip off that band aid a lot earlier than 18 months you can get them talking right away. That's fantastic. You know I've been around a lot of board tables and I have to say most recently I saw a budget and it was hard for me to read it was hard for me to comprehend and I've seen a lot right we've seen a lot. And I thought if I'm seeing this with 20 plus years of experience. Yes, a board member that doesn't have that experience if he she or they are really uncomfortable asking questions. So, you know, the data can be there but how it's presented can be night and day. Oh, absolutely. And the way that it helped the way that you present the data and the amount of data that you're presenting. Right. And what is what is relevant to the board members and what is maybe less relevant like do they really need to know how much you spent on paper clips. No, they were in all that good stuff. But we don't need to go. We don't need to get stuck in that spider web. That's for sure. So, you know, I was in CPA manager YPTC, your part time controller. You reference the website so I want to call that out YPTC.com. Check it out you can play with some of the data visualization, tons of great resources references on that website. And YPTC has been with us from the very, very beginning. We are so grateful to have you as part of our trick or treat clubs so thank you. Thank you for having me on this was so much fun. I love an opportunity to dress up. Yes, I know. Well, you've been, I think, the best Halloween guests we've ever had. Again, I'm Julia Patrick joined today by Jared Ransom the nonprofit nerd. It was really extraordinary as if you were with us in the beginning of the show. I happened to be a guest at a gala this weekend where the nonprofit nerd was emceeing and she did a brilliant job and brought in an extra hundred grand to the organization that they had not counted on, which was really exciting, really, really exciting. Again, we want to thank all of our presenting sponsors who are with us day in and day out, even on this very scary day of Halloween, Blue Moran American nonprofit account Academy, your part time controller, be generous. Fundraising Academy at National University, staffing boutique, nonprofit thought leader, and the nonprofit nerd. These are the folks that are with us day in and day out. And that's not a scary thing, is it Jared? No, it is such a supportive generosity movement. So thank you because we've allowed these opportunities like we've had with Justine. This week is a smash up. We've got a fantastic smash of guests coming up this week. Thanks, and thank you truly to our sponsors. I always like to call out, this is an unscripted show truly so we're showing up in conversation. Yes, we have, you know, an episode topic. Yes, we have key talking points. But what Julie and I asked and with the guest, it is very casual and legit conversation. So thank you to our sponsors that trust us with that. Have fun. Hey everybody, even on this Halloween day, we want to remind everyone to stay well so you can do well.