For executive directors of small and mid-sized nonprofits

You are running a modern mission on an outdated back office.

A bookkeeper at capacity. Grant reports assembled by hand. Numbers that are six weeks old by the time your board sees them. It is the same picture at almost every nonprofit I walk into, and it is fixable.

Your back office does not have to run like a nonprofit's. Real-time grant reporting, live dashboards and an automated close are within reach of a $2M organization, if the person setting them up has done it before.

Start a free conversation Thirty minutes. No deck, no pitch.

Michael Bennett

CPA · Career CFO

Denver, Colorado
Remote anywhere

Sound familiar?

None of this means something is broken. It means you have outgrown the setup.

Grant reporting takes days, and you are never fully sure it ties out.
The board asks a straightforward question and the answer takes a week.
Restricted and unrestricted funds live in someone's head, not in the system.
Audit season is a scramble instead of a formality.
Your accounting process was built years ago and nobody has questioned it since.
Your bookkeeper is capable, and completely maxed out.

Most executive directors are too busy with the mission to question any of this. You know what you have always known, and it is slowing you down.

The fix

The tools a for-profit takes for granted, built for your organization.

I rebuild nonprofit finance functions around modern systems and AI-assisted workflows, so one senior person delivers what used to take a department. Then I run it, bookkeeping included, so you are not hiring two people.

Real-time grant reporting

Every restricted dollar tied to its budget line, current to the day. Funder reports pulled in minutes, not days, and audit-ready as a standing state.

Dashboards your board can read

Cash, grant burn, budget to actual and forecast, on demand. Built around the questions your board actually asks, not around the general ledger.

An automated close

Reconciliations, allocations and the board package run as documented workflows from a handful of system exports. The month closes in days. The process survives staff turnover.

Why me

Twenty-five years of for-profit finance, now aimed at nonprofits.

I spent most of my career as a CFO in for-profit companies: investor-backed growth companies, real estate, a global agency as it grew from $25M to $70M, on a foundation from PwC. The last several years have been nonprofits, including the finance function of a national membership organization with 250,000 members and three entities.

That is the point. I bring the systems, discipline and tooling of a for-profit enterprise to organizations that have never been offered them, and I use AI the way a modern finance team does, so the work gets done faster and costs less.

References from the executive directors and owners I have worked with are available on request.

Where I have done this

Three nonprofits, three different missions, the same fix.

National membership nonprofit

Three entities, 250,000 members

A foundation, a housing entity and a fraternal organization with 360 chapters, real estate holdings and three boards. Built the finance function as fractional CFO, then ran it as CFO: a new ERP across all three entities, the monthly close cut from about 60 days to 10, a $100M debt restructuring that reduced projected debt service by roughly $5M, and the financial infrastructure for a $50M capital campaign.

Youth and family behavioral health

Finance cost cut roughly in half

A Northern Colorado provider with county, state and foundation funders. A two-person finance function consolidated into a fraction of one senior role, with the savings returned to program. Modernized the systems, automated the monthly close, and built a board package a non-financial board can read. Three years on, it still runs.

Veteran services, three clinics

Every grant dollar tied to a budget line

A Colorado nonprofit funded mainly by federal and state grants. Grant finance taken end to end: budgets, monthly federal draws, close-out and year-end reporting. A funder audit answered with a corrective action plan, then the cost allocation redesigned so it could not happen again. Books migrated to QuickBooks Online, the Form 990 brought in-house, a rolling cash model for the board.

Different missions, the same back-office problems, the same fix. Names and references available in conversation.

How it works

A monthly retainer, a fraction of a hire.

We start with a free conversation. If it makes sense, I look under the hood at your close, reporting, grant tracking and systems, and show you specifically what is costing you time and money. Then we scope an engagement sized to what you need, from a few days a month to an embedded finance director, and scale it as the organization changes.

When an engagement needs more hands than mine, a cleanup, a system migration, an audit push, I bring in people I have worked with before, and I stay the one accountable for the result.

Everything I build is documented and handed over. You keep the improvement, not a dependency on one consultant.

Let's talk

Spend your time on the mission. Let the back office run itself.

The first conversation is free and usually the most useful one. Even if we never work together, you will leave knowing what your options are and roughly what they cost.

Start a free conversation