Board of Directors Fiduciary Excellence

Everyone is welcome!

Although this course is aimed at nonprofit board members, everyone is welcome to attend. That includes leadership staff who want to understand board responsibilities and perspectives better as well as individuals who do not currently serve on boards.

Join us for this five-week course for boards to dig deep on nonprofit financial best practices, help them avoid pitfalls and permit them to make a strong overall contribution to the organization they serve.

Nonprofit Austin reserves the right to postpone this learning opportunity if there is inadequate registration.

Week 1: Core roles and duties:

-Legal requirements of all board members (quoting TX law)

-Legal liability

-Horror stories (Family Connections, my mom, etc.)

-D&O Insurance

-Treasurer role

-Chair’s role

-Finance Committee role (briefly; more next week)

Week 2: Relationship with staff – getting it right; adding value:

Board relationship with staff

-Executive Director

-Accounting and finance staff

-Power dynamics and the importance of clear roles

Finance Committee Role

-Adding value to the board

-Adding value to the staff

-Overperforming and underperforming

Week 3: Financial Reports

Why read the financial reports? Plus, how to read the financial reports

-Balance Sheet

-Profit and Loss

-Materiality (what to worry about and what not to worry about)

-Dashboards

-Inclusion

-Engaging the full board in financial decisions

Week 4: Fraud prevention, audits; separation of duties

-Internal controls

-Separation of duties

-Audit

Week 5: Bringing it all together

Additional Tools, benefits

-1:1 Advisory: In addition to the in-class time, each participant will get a 25-minute 1:1 phone advisory session with Sean Hale.

-Light weekly homework: Between each session we’ll have a light assignment such as a brief video or article. We’ll use this to reinforce key concepts and as a conversation starter the following week.

-Written Resources: Each week we will provide one or more resources to attendees such as treasurer job descriptions, templates, readings and podcast recommendations to continue learning, etc. The resources will come from a combination of Nonprofit CFOs materials, online materials (e.g., Board Source), and the Nonprofit Austin archives.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More about our facilitator, Sean Hale:

Sean has served a variety of nonprofits professionally since 1999. During his 20 years as a nonprofit employee, he made improvements that reduced waste, generated new revenue, boosted staff productivity and morale, grew financial transparency, and shrank risk. Sean has consistently left the organizations stronger and ready for their next stage of growth.

In 2020, he founded Nonprofit CFOs (formerly Sean Hale Consulting) now a 12-person team that helps small and medium-sized nonprofits ensure they have strong, effective financial management. Services include interim staffing, fractional CFO, and indirect cost rate calculations.

Host or Publisher Nonprofit Austin at ACC