Financial Leadership for Nonprofit Executives - by Jeanne Bell & Elizabeth Schaffer (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Guide your organization to financial sustainabilityMaking sure that your nonprofit is going to be around long-term requires financial leadership. This means creating a financial vision for your organization and planning how you'll get there. Financial Leadership for Nonprofit Executives gives you the framework, specific language, and processes to lead with confidence. With it, you'll learn how to protect and grow the assets of your organization and accomplish as much mission as possible with those resources.The good news is you don't have to be a trained accountant, earn an MBA, or have run a for-profit business in another lifetime. You already have many of the skills it takes to be a financial leader. This useful guide makes the process understandable and doable. Logical, clear, and well-writtenYou'll find clear, logical steps to learn how to

1. Get accurate financial data-in a format you can understand
2. Use financial data to evaluate your organization's health
3. Plan around a set of meaningful financial goals
4. Communicate progress on these goals to your staff, board, and external stakeholders.

You'll also find

• five foundational financial leadership principles
• three overarching questions every financial leader needs to be able to answer (and where to find those answers)
• two fundamental budgeting principles
• five steps to building a strong annual budget.

Case study brings concepts to lifeThis hands-on guide includes a recurring case study designed to help you understand the book's concepts in real-world terms. You can also use the sample statements and formats to improve your own organization's financial reporting."Red, Yellow, Green" evaluation keeps you on trackAt the end of each chapter is an evaluation tool. You can rate how your organization is doing relative to the component of financial leadership covered in each chapter. Each attribute is scored as being red, yellow, or green. "Red" items are below standard and require immediate attention; "yellow" items are widely practiced though not generally ideal; and "green" items are considered best practice. Over time, as you and your partners on the board and staff move the organization toward "green" in each of these areas, you will create an environment in which financial leadership can flourish.

Review Quotes

"Clear, accessible, painless-even inspiring! In my thirteen years as an executive director, I've never come across a resource that helps me confront and slay my finance demons as efficiently as Financial Leadership for Nonprofit Executives." --John Manzon-Santos, Executive Director, Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center

"Executive Directors can now step out from behind our 'financial people' and we, ourselves, can use finance as a precise tool in the fueling of social change--in our daily task of making the world a better place. Wow!" --Roni Posner, Executive Director Alliance for Nonprofit Management

"I wish I had this five years ago--though it's also 'perfect timing' right now!" --Barry Zack, Executive Director, Centerforce

"I need this book for teaching! I've had trouble finding a solid text that gives a good overview of how the system should work. This book simplifies financial processes into an easy-to-understand graphical mode." --Gloria Nedved, CEO, Ripple Creek Business Solutions

"An invaluable hands-on resource! In an era of more scrutiny, more accountability, and more demands for services with inadequate funds, this book will be a day-to-day resource for staff and board. Read it, then keep it close at hand." --Peter Brinckerhoff, President, Corporate Alternatives, Inc. and author, Nonprofit Stewardship and Financial Empower