Minisode: How to Navigate the Fiscal Tightrope Walked by Nonprofits - Chyla Graham

10:02PM Aug 6, 2021

Speakers:

Julie Confer

Becky Endicott

Jonathan McCoy

Chyla Graham

Keywords:

people

nonprofits

accounting

happening

organization

thinking

money

podcast

talking

synergy

person

financial statements

nonprofit leaders

conversation

check

kyla

community

helping

recognize

funder

Hey, I'm john. And I'm Becky. And this is the we are for good podcast.

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So let's get started. Welcome, welcome. Hey, Becky, what's happening?

ops people, we see you today, we've shown some love to the ops and we are bringing you an expert prompts

to the ops, just say that you are using props today.

Yeah, because you're doing the hard work. And we're gonna help you find out ways and efforts that you can employ to make the work easier. So it is my great pleasure to introduce Kyla Graham. She is the president of synergy and you're probably thinking of it in your head as the word synergy, but it's actually C in RG synergy accounting advisory LLC. And she has an incredible podcast called the nonprofit Ace podcast. So for all you podcasters out there, check that out. But she's a Certified Public Accountant with over 10 years of experience helping nonprofit organizations realign and thrive with their operational procedures. And so she quickly recognized the importance of synchronizing an organization spending with its mission. That's next level thinking right there. And then she fostered this passion within her for training staff and financial literacy and accounting principles. So she secured over $2 million in funding for several different organizations. And she's helped so many of them streamline their efforts to better serve their communities. So she is the person john in nonprofit who is passionate about getting about helping nonprofit leaders get comfortable talking about money. And I feel like that's a theme that's come up in the podcast before and within our community that people don't want to feel smarmy, they don't want to feel like they're, you know, having a taboo conversation, because there's a lot of people in different generations who do not talk about money. So we are going into this conversation bravely. And we've got an expert to lead us so Kyla, welcome to the we're for good podcast, we're so glad you're here. Joining me,

Julie had given us some notes about you beforehand, cuz I don't know that this is out there. But I want to see this, we hear that you're interested in flying trapeze in your time off, right,

and you connect the trapeze to this entire process of financial planning and literacy. I don't know how you're going to weave this, but I can't wait to hear it. I

need a video to link in our show notes because I need to see you.

I will get the video done. Okay. So for me, that was my present to myself, when I pass the CPA exam, I was like we're going on vacation friends, what I found in the doing that was like the nerves of like, I think I'm gonna be sick. What's gonna happen and the more I worked with nonprofits, I realized they had similar feelings. Like each of our missions are slightly different, the way we show up, and the way we serve, our audiences are super different. But it's just us were the face of the organizations were the ones people see doing the trick. But there's so many people behind the scenes. So the first person you'll meet is going to be the person who's on the grounds, who they're the person on the lines. They're there to keep you safe. You have the skill set, you have the passion, you have the drive. And I just want to make sure you don't wreck like do not fly into another wall. And they are there. Just for that reason. I think as nonprofit leaders, we recognize or some organizations recognize, I know I know a thing. I need other people who are those other people who are going to keep me safe. And then you go up, and there's someone who's actually holding you, they make sure you have a safe lunch. So you can think of those like maybe your attorneys, the people who are on your board, and then our leaders do the trick. And all of them play a part.

I think this is a really interesting topic because I do think there is something to what you're saying here about the stigma that's around having these tough conversations and being brave enough to talk about the elephant in the room. And I think you people are very intimidated. And I'm raising my hand is one of them. As somebody who's intimidated by the ops world. It has a lot of complexity, there's a lot of nuance to it. I clearly do not have a math mind within my brain. And in talking about the things that make us uncomfortable and pushing past that because we want to be able to be good stewards of all the gifts that come into are organizations. And if we can have frank conversations about how the money moves and how its operating and how we can describe its impact, because it's moving throughout our organizations, I just think this leap of faith that you're talking about and asking people to take is a dive into just being more financially literate about what's happening within our organizations is a good one. So where do you think is like a starting place for people who want to embrace this sort of ideology? And maybe take that leap of faith to dive into this more deeply?

Yeah, I say the first place to start is to not do it alone. So just like with trapeze, you're going to look for a community, you're going to look for someone to tell you a thing to show you, How is it done? You want to look for those people checking out podcasters and signing up for a webinar to say, who's actually talking about this stuff, so that I can get an intro to it? Because I think we all recognize we don't know what we don't know, try to see what are the resources in your area that can say, please point me, what is the topic I should start with? And let them be the first your Launchpad of like, this is the first time first place I will go to check out?

What else could

I learn about this topic?

Well, I think you know, your podcast has been focusing this season a lot on fraud within profit trustees, completely fascinating. And I just love I mean, the light and energy that you bring to the conversation, I can't imagine how you tackle the idea of fraud. But would you talk a little bit about that? And what are you seeing in nonprofits? What are some of the signs that you can find is something that we haven't actually talked about on the podcast, I'm curious about why you chose to go there? And what are some ways that we could all, you know, look and have greater understanding of what could be happening?

Yeah, so for the, for me, the first part about understanding like financial fraud, and how can you be more alert is asking for an overview of what did the financial statements even mean? I like to say as a refresher at the beginning of the year board should say, Can we have an overview of like, what each of these parts of the reports mean? So the balance sheet, it tells us, what do we own? Who do we owe? And then what's left over? And then as you look at that, you can say, oh, why do we owe these people this money? Or why haven't these people paid? Like having a simple breakdown of like, what is this supposed to tell me? we'll encourage people to ask questions. And then when they look at the statement of activity, they can think of how do we make money? And how do we spend money? So starting to ask questions, because you know, the programs you do, so I should see money that aligns with some of our programming needs. One of the places times I saw fraud, not that anyone was stealing any money. But the treasurer was not updating the financial statements. So they were just like, I think we should have this much in cash. And I think we probably should have charged this gotten this much.

So using the word think is the trigger, right? Yeah, financial person is using the word think,

no one ever thought like, Hey, we're halfway through the year, how much money should we have, you know, received in revenue from the grants and the funders that we have? So far, they missed it. They went a whole year, until the audit happened. And they were like, so those numbers were wrong. And it wasn't that the met the person was malicious or intending, let's deal they were just overwhelmed. And if the rest of the board felt comfortable saying like, hey, why isn't that funder giving us the money? Why do we still show a receivable for them? I think that could have alerted them like, Oh, these numbers don't really make sense. Or if they compared it to the previous year, they could say, Well, last year, this is where we were, why aren't we've here this year. So really thinking about context? And just general? What's the simplest way this should show up?

Those are really good suggestions. And I mean, I just think about, you're talking about just having a sound infrastructure in place and having systems in place. And that's what I think about nonprofit organizations who are thriving, like they have really ironclad policies and procedures, they know exactly what their financial statements are. Are you building in anything that has you consistently looking at your numbers, figuring out how you could articulate them? So I'm curious if you could walk us through how nonprofits can build a strong infrastructure? What are the key steps and where can somebody start?

The key steps are thinking about what are your biggest worries, and the biggest ways that you operate? So we want to know how does money come into the organization? Okay, let's write out that process. And so that's the first piece to me is just documenting what is actually happening and then looking at it from a from the perspective of risk. I try to remind people that it's not just about protecting the organization, you want to protect the reputation of the people there and so you never Put them in a position where someone can say, well, it must have been them. there need to be someone else who can talk and check my work and who can check what I'm doing?

Good. Just like account building accountability into the steps. I think that's really real. Is

that a dead pun you put account accounting into the first conversation there.

It's the closest I get to account. Yes, talking about accounting.

Okay, so step one is documenting what's actually happening, which is really good, a good suggestion and writing it down. And I think that that's a really good hack in terms of looking at it from a perspective of risk so we can see where the landmines and how do we circumvent that from happening to build a really sound structure? Okay,

so what's number two? Number two is get other people's feedback. So you have board members, you have staff ask them what they've seen other places, just because they haven't been the one in the accounting role doesn't mean they don't have a perspective on it. They might have interacted with their accounting person at the other department, another place. So saying, okay, we're trying to build this system, or what have you seen that makes you worried, and you want to make sure we avoid those pitfalls, and making sure that the board has the buy in? Because if especially if you're a small organization, and you like our Treasurer should be doing x? Does your Treasurer Now presenting that to the board to say, hey, what, how do you feel about this, if you have to sign off and say, We're the legal representative, we know that this is happening, we are comfortable with the way this is operating or supposed to operate? That way you can start to build that up and say, All right, we've gotten we wrote it down, we fleshed out what we thought was wrong. Now we've had it vetted by some other people. And now let's truly put this into practice.

I think that's really smart. Because you're actually talking about how do you triangulate to get everyone speaking with one voice, because even when I go back into my career and think about all the financial groups that are tied in to the organization, it's like, you know, we would have the foundation operational manager, but we would also have accounts payable, and we would have accounts receivable, and we had an investment committee, and we also had an operations committee. And it's like, we need to make sure that we're getting feedback from everybody, so that all of our policies, and everybody's understanding where we're moving, so that was a good one.

I like to tell people give it three months before you try to make another change. If it's your reports, or the way you process things, just give it some time. But if you're like, Oh, this is just uncomfortable, give it some time, because sometimes I think we're so quick to be like, this is harder, this requires more time. And yes, it might in the beginning, but everything is easier. If you've done it for 10 years. If you've done it for five years, well, yes, it only takes you five minutes, because you don't think about it anymore. And so giving this new process by chance, you know, I

think one of the things that I think about is when you're not when you don't have literacy and knowledge about how to manage your finances, you're gonna make a ton of mistakes, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Talk to us about some of the common financial mistakes nonprofits make in this part of our business and how we can avoid them.

Yes, I would say one of the things is deciding that you're going to do so especially in small nonprofits, they decided the executive director is also the bookkeeper is also the reporter. And so really thinking of, is that the best use of that person's time? And how do we delegate? So really thinking of, Hey, we have a treasure, how do we maximize this volunteer while we can. So that's the first thing is, one person can't do it all. The other thing I thought about was not getting feedback. So just like on trapeze, you do the trick? Well, when you come down, the person who was online will give you feedback about what they saw. So look at the people who are around you that you say I trust your opinion. I know that you see this, can you give me some feedback on things that we could do better or differently? Way too often as we do what we're comfortable with. And we get so comfortable that we stopped thinking about ways to use technology, the ways to leverage our staff, then we just say, Well, we've always done it that way.

And systems are put into place to make us more efficient. They they save us time they save us headache. And you know, we are also very triggered by the phrase, this is the way it's always been done. I feel like anyone who's ever worked in nonprofit has probably heard that phrase, especially if there's any longevity to it. So yeah, I mean, I just want to support what you're saying here about embrace technology, try some new things, move to online, why use your cloud, you know, to save your documents, we might be able through the through the lens of embracing technology be able to save our ops team so much time and what they do. Because we can automate these things,

we you've given us so many great tips and tools in this conversation, we ask all of our guests, what's your one good thing? If you could narrow it down to something to leave with us? Maybe it's a good habit or a piece of advice. What would be your one good thing.

I have been in the nonprofit space, what it feels like 20 years at this point, I felt like I was always on in some roles. Like there was always an email, there was always a meeting to attend. And so I had to recognize that, hey, you need to add blocker so that you can't go into your email cuz I turned off the notifications. And that wasn't enough. And it just gave me back some time for myself to just be like what you're doing

notifications on our phone are a distractor. And they help us lose focus. And they give us anxiety no matter what it is. It could be something completely basic or negative. Yeah, but it's another thing to look at. It's another thing to do. It's another thing to take in, I actually think that is such a smart, one good thing because they're just distractors. And we need focus, which is what I'm hearing and intentionality to do all the things that are on our plates every single day. So how can people connect with you? Kyla, how can they connect to synergy give us the hookups on all your contact info.

If people wanted to connect with me, LinkedIn is the place that I am most active. I'm will respond to you send me a message there. So you'd find me at my name. So I'm Kyla Graham on LinkedIn. On Instagram. We're at synergy advisory. And if they head over to the website, synergy accounting advisory comm they can find other ways to connect as well as find the podcast. Well, we thank you for spending so much time with our community today and we just wish you well and all of the nonprofit's that you're serving. Good luck to you.

Thank you Have a good one. Hey, friends, thanks so much for being here. Did you know we create a landing page for each podcast episode with helpful links, freebies and even shareable graphics. Be sure to check it out at the link in this episode's description. You probably hear it in our voices but we love connecting you with the most innovative people to help you achieve more for your mission than ever before. We'd love for you to join our good community it's free and you can think of it as the after party to each podcast episode. You can sign up today at weird for good calm backslash. Hello. One more thing if you loved what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating and review? It means the world to us and Your support helps more people find our community. Thanks friends. I'm our producer Julie Confer and our theme song is sunray by Remy Boris boom