 Hello there. Welcome. So glad you're here. Another episode of the non-profit show and we are raring to go. We've got Jennifer Aliva, CPA and managing partner with your part-time controller with us today in the hot seat. As she mentioned in our green room chatter, we have had many of the team members from YPTC join us throughout this year and they'll be back next year. So don't worry. They're staying with us. But Jennifer's here to talk about your end review and what you might have missed. So we're going to dive deep in this conversation and kind of give you a recap. But before we do, we want to remind you who you're seeing or possibly listening to. So hello to Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your non-profit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group. And a quick shout out, I just had non-profit nerd trademarks. I'm really excited to own that nerdiness and really get into that. So yeah, big things ahead. We wouldn't be where we are without the great support, the investment, the trust and respect from our amazing presenting sponsors. So a huge shout out of gratitude to Bloomerang, the American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at the National University. Be generous. Your part-time controller. Again, where Jennifer joins us. Staffing boutique, non-profit thought leader and the non-profit nerd. Do yourself a favor and us as well as our sponsors. Check these companies out. They are amazing. And I always like to reiterate that they have one mission. That mission is your mission to help you elevate your mission in and around throughout your community. So check them out. Do yourself a favor. Consider working with them in 2023 because they are here to support you day in and day out as you do the good work in your community. And hey, I mentioned we have 700 episodes coming up on that actually right on Christmas Day this month. Yeah, really exciting. But if you did miss any episodes, including those with Jennifer and her teammates from YPTC, you know where to find them by now, but that's Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire TV, Vimeo, as well as podcast. So go ahead and queue us up wherever you listen to your podcast. So check us out there. I know we've had quite a bit of downloads and we're looking to hit the top charts of the nonprofit show for those podcasts. So thank you to our sponsors that allow us these opportunities. Jennifer, we are so thrilled to have you back here. You've been with us really from the very beginning, bringing, you know, breaking news as we are live because again, these are live episodes. Again, Jennifer Aliva, CPA, managing partner at your part-time controller. Welcome. Oh, hello. It's great to be with you again. Jennifer, we count on you for so much information. And one of the things that I really have learned from you and it's been observational. And I just want to share this before we get into, you know, our conversation today is that I think that we need in the nonprofit sector to stop thinking about our accounting providers is just kind of like ledger-oriented information about do the books match what the bank says, right? That we need to start looking at them as folks that can be part of our overall strategy and our strategic health moving forward. And so what we're going to talk about today is not necessarily accounting, but it is, right? So I'm so intrigued by how this dynamic I'm going to call it has moved us forward, I think in a really, really good way. And the first one that is kind of surprising is cybersecurity. Yeah. First of all, thank you for saying that and bringing that up about accountants and specifically your part-time controller, not just being a number cruncher. We partner with our organizations with the nonprofit executive directors, with boards, to help them with all things surrounding the business of that nonprofit. So we talk about things that are transactional. Yeah, the transactions that we do, making sure that the debits and credits are right, making sure our organizations have fantastic financial information on which to make decisions. But then we also talk about the transformational things that we do with our clients, making recommendations on all things, not all things, but things that we can help them with, that we can get information for them and provide them direction on about their business and transform the organization in many, many ways. It's so interesting and I know that Jared and I have talked about this. A lot of times, you all in the accountancy world see things first and then the implications that become financial. And in one of those is cybersecurity. Yes. What about that? Because I think that's not something we would think that our accounting providers can be leaning in on. Well, I'll tell you what we see. And everything comes through the accounting department, all the transactions. And that's what I love about accounting. You get to see it all. And that's why my father said, be an accountant. You get to see all aspects of business. And cybersecurity is one of them. And when I think about it, I think about the fraud around cybersecurity. And that's where we see it in the nonprofit accounting world. And in September, I talked to you guys about some frightening frauds and about a couple headlines where criminals sent bogus emails to organizations, either asking them for money or setting up fictitious vendors to have the organization send them money or posing as American Express to hit up employees for their login information in order to steal from their accounts. So headlines abound, they continue to, and there's electronic threats all over the place. The FBI reported that $43 billion has been lost on schemes called social engineering. And if you remember, I talked to you about phishing, vishing and smishing. And I looked up in Webster Dictionary, I was like, are these legit words, Jennifer? Phishing is the email frauds. Phishing is telephone scams. And smishing is by text. So when you have electronic bill pay, you're paying by wires in each CH. And that's where cybersecurity and accounting really connect. That's where you really, really have to be aware. So I have some tips. Well, and I want to remind people too. So again, you can go back to our archives. This episode we're really highlighting some of the things that you might have missed in this 2022 year-end recap. But that is a definitely hot topic. Just this morning, Jennifer, I got an email with an attachment of an invoice, which I know I've not done business with this person. And I thought there's no way I'm opening that. But what I'm going to do is pick up the phone and call them and say, exactly, know that there is this email going around. And if in fact, I have done business with you, and that slipped my mind. That's my biggest tip is if you're getting these phishing emails is to never react to them and send money and funds on just an email alone. You of course have to pick up the phone and confirm maybe even face to face with the person that they are actually asking you to send funds. And then really when vendors call and or send an email or text saying, hey, our bank account information changed. Can you change that for us? You got to confirm that because what these criminals are doing is setting up fake bank accounts within your vendor names, your legitimate vendor names and having their payments go to the wrong bank account. So set up these policies. Make sure that they're followed. Make sure your IT company or your internal IT staff is involved. Make sure that you have training for your staff. We have a routine where our IT provider sends fake phishing schemes to our staff to see if they click on them. And if they click on them, then you get extra training. Before we move on to the next piece of this, why PTC? You all have some great training modules within your own website that actually talked about this. So again, as Jarrett mentioned, you can certainly get back to art through our archives, but definitely I would check out why PTC's piece of that as well. So we have a whole series of webinars. I'm going to mention the different webinars that go along with these topics as well that we have done this year. This one on cybersecurity slash fraud, because they are very interconnected, is called fraud trends and anti-fraud tips. And you can see it at yptc.com. Awesome. I love it. Let's get on to another thing again that maybe we wouldn't think that this is something that our accounting partners would engage with us in outside of accounting. And this is succession planning. Jarrett and I talk about this a lot. This is the world that Jarrett lives in with her interim work that she does. Talk to us about what you're seeing and why we need to be thinking about this in partnership with our accounting process. It's a great big deal for everyone in the nonprofit world and accountants. So I'll get to that too. In June, I talked about on this show the great resignation and what I called the great reevaluation because a lot of people are reevaluating their jobs and the way that they work. The fact is that baby boomers are retiring in record numbers. And there's just not enough Gen Xers, Ys, Zs, millennials to fill all their roles. The Society of Human Resources Management also says that nonprofit executives are retiring 60% faster than others. So nonprofits have a special need for succession planning. The Chronicle of Philanthropy in May had this article called large numbers of nonprofit leaders are stepping down in the competition to find new ones as fierce. The article notes that burnout is a big contributed factor to nonprofit turnover. And the fact is, younger staff that we've seen this, don't desire to do it all like others have in the past, you know, wear the multiple hats, work the crazy hours. So there's a big gap in, you know, those that are retiring, those that are just voluntarily leaving the nonprofit world, whether they're executives or others, and those that are ready to fill their shoes. And it's really bad for accountants. Very scary. There are the number of accountants retiring is astronomical. But the number of accounting students and the number of CPAs, people taking the CPA exam are all decreasing. So we really have a big gap there as well to fill. Our friend, Geraldine Dressler, our Director of Strategic Partnerships has written an article, be on the lookout for it, regarding the shortage in nonprofit accountants specifically in the Council or the nonprofit, National Council of Nonprofit Newsletter. It's coming out in January. So take a look for that. Yeah, we'll have to take a look for that. Geraldine's been active on our Q&A. So we see you, Geraldine. Thanks for joining us here. It just makes me think also, we need more Ellies, right? Ellie Hume on your team. She knew from a young, you know, little girl that she wanted to be an accountant. And so I love that story too. And as we talk about, you know, STEM and STEAM in our programming, that is just a perfect story. And I still, Ellie, I still see a children's book with her face and name on it. I love that. And I try to just always talk positively about accountants. Accountants get a bad rap. And we talk poorly sometimes about ourselves. Oh, you know, we're just counting numbers. We're boring. There's nothing fun about accounting. And it couldn't be like further from the truth. I mean, we, as I mentioned before, we see everything. It's exciting. And I always say accounting is awesome. So it's kind of like HR. I have a dear friend who's in HR. And she's like, you know, we show up one way. We have to, we have to present in this, you know, manner at work, but you better believe we're some fun people. I love that. So I think for succession planning, like developing a plan, having a plan that might include in the interim or longer term outsourced solutions, like your part time controller, or like interim executive solutions, or like the work you're doing, Jared, you know, interim executive solutions. David Harris was on your show earlier this year as well as a friend. So, and we did a webinar on this topic, succession planning back in the summer. And so see that at our website. Lots of great tips on what to do about succession planning, but it's really important to focus nonprofits on the burnout part of why people are leaving as well. And a couple tips here. And I just attended this week, it's called the digital CPA conference. And you're like, how do you, how are you equating burnout with the digital CPA conference? But a lot of it had to do with exciting people in the workplace. And the one speaker called, said, create a destination workplace. And I just love that term. I thought you guys would love that term, a destination workplace, being the place people want to be. And then this other author and one of the key notes, Marcus Buckingham, a great author. He talked about designing work people love. And generally, designing work people love in the nonprofit world is kind of easy, but you still have to be intentional about building your culture and making it a great place to be, making sure that you have the right value proposition for your staff. Is it salary benefits, time off flexibility, right? And then focusing on employee wellbeing. And these are all things that we do at your part-time controller as an intentional way to attract and retain staff. But it has to be, it has to be for everybody. And I really, I'm a big preacher of, of intentional culture and also making great opportunities for your, your staff, whether you know, create clear career paths. And I talk about that with, on my podcast, Mission Business, and it's coming out soon. I have a lot of these coming out soon and you have some, some that happened, but. We can appreciate this, Jennifer. We can appreciate this. Annbury Gray is the executive director for one of our long-time clients, USA for UNHCR. They're an organization that helps refugees around the world that has grown tremendously over the last few years. And she talks about building teams on this podcast in a really wonderful way for a nonprofit and also talks about succession planning because she's leaving the organization in the near term and talks about a great plan that she, she put together. Good. Yeah, that's fantastic. Well, let's move into our time is going by so quickly. Oh, quickly. Let's move into federal awards. Now, I mentioned earlier, Jennifer, you've come to us literally with your phone, you know, right next to you saying this just in breaking news from, you know, federal, federal updates. So talk to us about federal awards as they relate to our organizations and the impacts of that. Yeah. So when I was talking, when I first started appearing on the nonprofit show, we're talking about PPP loans, pay tech, paycheck, protection loans and other COVID related funding relief for nonprofits. There's so much more out there for nonprofit organizations and YPTC is really taking a gigantic focus on that. We started, we've always had a focus on helping our organizations manage their federal awards because there's a lot of management that is required from making sure that the accounting's right, that the reporting back to the funder is right, that the audit that often, if you're receiving a lot of federal awards, you're going to be subject to a special audit and getting them getting our clients ready for those special audits. But now we are actually helping our clients find and apply for federal funding. This is a new service line that we're providing. And we kind of announced it and introduced it at last week's webinar that we did all about federal funding where we talked about, half of the webinar was talking about applying for, finding and applying for federal funding. And the second half was about how you manage them. So it's a great one. We actually had over a thousand people sign up for it. Over 600 people were there for the live in the live audience, and they all stayed to like the very end. So clearly it hit a nerve. So I think there's a lot more of that going to come out from us. And then also you can see the recording of that webinar. Are you writing the grants for them? Are you helping to prepare the financial? Like what is your name? We will be helping organizations find grant funding specific for them and helping them in the writing. Now I don't know how much writing specifically we'll be doing for them, but we will be helping guide and support them in that process. So we have a new person that we hired in charge of that department, our federal funding department. His name is Derek Dreyer, and we'd love to have him. He'd be a great guest for you next year. And he is a former executive director. He's not an accountant. So there you go. There's the connection of the federal boards and non-accounting. And as we talk of federal and we don't have time to go down this rabbit hole, Jennifer, but that in and of itself comes with so many others, right? Like the single audit that we have. We had a fantastic member of your team join us to talk about that. So there's so many things to consider when you consider federal funding, the compliance, the reporting, the management of all of that. So let's get him. You said his name was Derek. Derek Dreyer, and he was one of our clients way back when, one of our very first clients over 30 years ago. And I did want to hopefully have some time to talk about our 30th anniversary. So 2023. Big stuff. Well, let's move into data visualization. So hopefully you'll have some time for the 30th anniversary plug. That is another, I have nerded out over this topic. In fact, I have the great honor of working with some of your team with several of my clients actually. And it's just a lot of fun because I get to see different personalities. Talk to us about data viz or visualization. So everybody is short on time. And we're all used to seeing snippets of information on which we make decisions every day and in seconds. So data viz is all about getting the right information in front of the right people at the right time in the right format. And visualizations can be useful for internal purposes, executive directors, board members. And it's just not financial only financial information. It's all about, you know, the business information, the KPIs, the programmatic information, your fundraising information that goes to all members of management, as well as your board. And then it can be used for external purposes to help tell your story the best way possible to your funders. So it's really an important aspect to the whole picture of telling the organization's story to your stakeholders. Now you have an entire data viz team. Is that right? We do. We do. Led by Bill Schwab, who has been on the show a few times. And Bill is just terrific. And our data visualization team helps us in many, many ways. One way is to help support our client service teams to create the information the best way possible for every single one of our clients. The other way is we can support organizations that aren't even our clients in many ways. If they just need data visualization help, they can reach out to our data visualization team. And a great way to get started with that is to check out our website. We have our own, our data visualization has their own page on our YPTC website. So if you go to yptc.com slash data slash dash visualization, we'll be able to see all kinds of examples and cool things that we have done and hope inspire your organization to see what can you do. You know, it's really a great page because what it does is it takes information that I think a lot of times board members or even partners would just kind of like gloss over or they would hear numbers and it wouldn't really register. But when you look at that page and you see how you've articulated different data points into these graphics, it is remarkable. I mean, I think it's really where we need to be going. And Jared, I'm sorry, I interrupted you. No, I was just going to give a shout out to Bill. He was such an awesome guest. You know, the way that he presented himself with the data visualization opportunities from YPTC is really important. So I know we're mentioning a lot of things in this episode because that's exactly what it's for. It's that recap. But really just another plug that you can absolutely go back and listen or watch that episode that is focused specifically on data visualization, how you can provide this to your board. And even as Jennifer just mentioned, external stakeholders. So that's that's really important. We had a question from a viewer, it goes back to the federal grants, Jennifer. So we're kind of jumping back. But I wanted to address this for our guest. Will this initiative provide assistance with developing the budget? So will YPTC help with the development of the budget? Absolutely. We've always done that. So that's not so there's there's really on the development of budgets on understanding what the reporting requirements will be on helping organizations in their application process on the audit facilitation for a single audit. That is things. Those are things that we're already specialists in and we've been doing for 30 years at your part-time controller, Eric Wilson. I think that's who you were alluding to before that was on the show just I think a few weeks ago, talking about federal grants. So we have that expertise and had that expertise on our staff for a very long time. The new part is is finding and finding the right awards for the organization and then tailoring the story for the application. So that's that's really the new part of it. Well and we're again I'm working with a client that has received lots of federal funding. So in the matter of 18 months has jumped their operating budget about five million dollars and that comes with a lot of federal funding that compliance piece and our YPTC person is really the critical you know stop gap to making sure that that funding comes in that we're doing our management for that. So it really is I mean I'm not getting paid for this but it really plays and it is just so wonderful to have that person on our team. It is just I mean it brings so much confidence to all of us. So yeah definitely check into that. So that wraps up our key points. So now's your time Jennifer. Tell us a little bit about this 30th anniversary. This is 30 years in March of 2023 so we say we're in our 30th year now so we're going to have a year-long celebration in 2023 starting actually now internally we have our annual awards next week and the whole theme is 30th anniversary going into the 90s theme that's a lot of fun. We're really reflecting on the past as well as focusing on the future in for a 30th anniversary celebration. So Eric and I, Eric Frank our founder and president just recorded a mission business podcast that will be coming out I guess in January where he talks about the history of the firm and goes into why we work with nonprofits all you know through the story of you know what brought us here today to a firm of over 500 people across the country. So that was a lot of fun and I think people will really be interested in hearing from the horse's mouth how it all got started and what we're all about today. We're also going to be telling client stories all throughout the year and celebrating our clients and which of course is the most along with our staff the most important thing about your part-time controller are nonprofit clients and the missions that they serve and and how they interconnect with the work that we do at your part-time controller and then our SAC staff celebrating them throughout the you know for all of 2023 so. Oh big congratulations that is quite the milestone thank you for your service and all that you do in and around our community we're so very grateful. Julia let's pop up Jennifer's contact information again I want everyone to reach out to YPTC check out the website check out these webinars that Jennifer has so beautifully peppered throughout today's conversation yptc.com is the web address that you want to check out Jennifer it's been a pleasure I know that we are going to have you and we've already tagged Derek Diana I mean a couple other into next year so thank you. Yeah for that well as we wrap up today's episode we of course want to thank our amazing sponsors that allow this opportunity for all of us to have these conversations so again another huge shout out of gratitude to Bloomerang American nonprofit academy fundraising academy at national university be generous your part-time controller where you heard it from Jennifer Aliva here today staffing boutique nonprofit thought leader as well as the nonprofit nerd so grateful each and every day to have the support from these sponsors none of these episodes are scripted we have the conversation point and we literally fill up our cup of coffee you know sometimes it's coffee sometimes it's water but having a conversation and these are a legitimate casual organic conversation so thank you for being of service thank you to all of our sponsors and of course to Jennifer and thanks to all of you that show up day in day out or maybe even watch the recordings we're so very grateful to have you here as part of the team we have a huge lineup that that will kick us through our end this you know through this year and the next year quite the lineup there again so thank you for joining us it's been amazing Jennifer thank you thank you thank you you're a beautiful representation of Eric Frank's vision and your team is amazing Jared and I get to work with them in our community on the other side of the country and they're always just lovely so thank you thank you hey everybody as we end another wonderful episode of the nonprofit show we look forward to more and more uh guests coming to us with their thoughts as we end up the year we want to remind ourselves our viewers our listeners our guests to stay well so you can do well we'll see you back here tomorrow