Welcome to the nonprofit show. We are so glad you're here. We hope that you are in costume as well because the three of us are really excited to have with us for today's show, Andrew Miller, who joins us as director of your part-time controller. Howdy there, Andrew. We're excited to learn more about you, but you bring to us the topic that we've not really like set some time dedicated to this solely. So you're here to talk to us about the traditional versus the modern CFO and the CEO relationship. So excited to learn from you in just a moment about that. But before we dive deep, we wanna remind you, if you cannot recognize us today, Julia Patrick is here. She's the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. And I'm Jarrett Ransom, also Miss Candy Corm, the nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. And again, just honored to serve alongside. There's not many days that keep us off air and Halloween is one of them. So we are dressed for the occasion here with all the treats, but we also have a wonderful treat from our presenting sponsors. So thank you for your loyal support and your investment into the nonprofit sector. So thank you, goes out to Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University, nonprofit thought leader, your part-time controller. Again, where Andrew is joining us from today. Also thank you to Staffing Boutique, nonprofit nerd, as well as nonprofit tech talk. And if you have not checked out these companies, as soon as we wrap up today's episode, we encourage you to do that because they have a lot of good goodness to share with you. And I really like to say their mission is your mission because they wanna help you do more good in, around and throughout your community. Speaking of more good, we have more goodness up for you to check out and all of these platforms. So you can download the app, you can just take your smartphone and scan that QR code right now. You can also find us on podcast and broadcast platforms. So anywhere you consume your entertainment, chances are the nonprofit show is there as well. Okay, Andrew, you have waited patiently and we love your getup, but Andrew Miller joins us, director of your part-time controller. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, and tell us a little bit, where are you joining us from? And what is your role in the nonprofit sector as it relates to YPTC? Absolutely. So I came to YPTC about two and a half years ago as an associate and jumped into the manager role and then also moved into this director role for the Houston market. So I have a lot of experience here at YPTC as well as before the St. My First rodeo. I was also the CFO and CEO for nonprofit organizations previously. So I have a lot of experience in this area. Fantastic. Wow. So I always love it when we have guests who sat on both sides of the table because I just think it makes for such a richer conversation. And I can tell that you're not an old cowboy, but like you said, this ain't your first rodeo. So I think it's gonna be fun to get your perspective on this, Andrew. And we're really looking forward to kind of talking through this. So paint the picture of what the traditional CEO, CFO, relationship and how that structure, I don't wanna say it was in the past because I think a lot of folks are still doing it, but what does that look like? Yeah, this is a great starting point, Julia. So the traditional CFO focused on a few key areas and I don't wanna downplay the importance of these areas, but typically traditional CFOs were focusing on the accuracy of the accounting information. They were also focused on compliance to regulatory entities. And then also focused on risk management is another area. And then the financial reporting. So with the financial reporting though, traditionally what that looked like was more of a backwards looking historical type financial reporting. So we're looking at what happened last month, last quarter, last year, layering in some budget versus actuals. Traditionally we were looking backwards in our financial reporting. Yeah, and wow, can you just say the word backwards? That in itself, Jared, right? Yeah, that caught me off guard too, really looking backwards in that space. We were just talking about the great partnership that the CEO and the CFO can have and really the finance team with all members of the organization. I'm curious how often you see this traditional model still being played out and used today? All the time, all the time. All the time. So a lot of our clients, they are using the tools that they got from the prior people and their roles, right? We're always capitalizing and utilizing that historical financial reporting. And I think we've all heard from nonprofits, that's the way we've always done it, right? So we hear that all the time whenever we're working with our clients. And our job is to educate them, train them and show them what can be possible in the modern age. Well, talk to us about this modern age because I'm ready for it, right? Like I'm always ready for a shakeup, a little bit of a disruptor, love innovation, finding new ways of doing things that have a better ROI or a better partnership. So talk to us now about the modern relationship between that CEO and the CFO. Absolutely. So the first thing that a modern CFO is looking to do is to look at the forward-facing, forecasting financials, right? So, we certainly don't want to discount the historical information. That's important because that helps us with the forecasting, but we're also layering in. One thing at YPTC we do is called a rolling forecast and our clients love it. It's taking a look at the rest of the year, what we think is gonna happen and then we're updating that monthly with what has happened and updating our forecast for the future. A big area that this served us well in is looking at the relief funding that came out of the pandemic, right? So we're looking at these huge influxes of funding. How are we gonna utilize that? And also how are we gonna save some of that for rainy day? So what we saw happen a lot with organizations is they used up all their relief funding and now there's no new relief funding coming in to the wealth right up, right? So that's one area that is really important is that forward-looking financials. You know, I've seen that CFO person serve so many ways over the last four years. It's really been an integral role for the organization. Andrew, I'm sure you've heard, but many organizations, well, many organizations did not do so well and sadly have closed. Others, however, have seen this huge influx of cash, right, whether it's from the CARES Act and other funding entities that has been available, but now organizations are saying, okay, now we need to right-size the ship, right? We jumped up to a 17 million organization, but now we're really looking at about seven, right? And so I can only think this modern CFO plays a critical piece in forecasting, okay, where do we need to look three years down the road? Is that an accurate assessment? Absolutely, yeah, and that's another key integral piece of the modern CFO and where they should be looking is, you should be, the modern CFO should be looking for what other opportunities are there for funding to support that increase in your programs as well as what's working and what's not working. So providing that financial analysis to the CEOs, to the board, to help them understand, hey, we had this event last year, this year, last year it served as three-fold this year, it doubled what we put into it. And so we're looking at, maybe this event is not for us again this year. So looking at those, providing that analysis so that the management and board can make business decisions, right? Yeah, absolutely. Do you think that this is something that the CFO and that whole department has always kind of known or observed but they haven't articulated it or they haven't been invited to the table to talk about this? Because I've gotta believe this is not a new amount of knowledge or the sources of knowledge are new. It seems to me like it's more of a communication, almost like a role issue. Like, and I don't know if I'm articulating that well, but these people that have been in accounting and finance, they haven't just tracked the numbers. They've had to have been thinking about these things all along or is this a new day? You know, that's an interesting question. I think that one thing is that the CEO's role is shifting and so that also allows some opportunity for the CFO to step up and help be that thought partner, that strategic business partner for the CEO. The CEO is out there trying to get, you know, they're shifting from operational to more strategic as well. So the CFO just in tandem is stepping into that strategic partner role along with the CEO. I think that's a big part of it. So I've got to ask this question then, you know, what has forced this? I mean, we look at this amazing time that we are living in pre-pandemic, pandemic, post-pandemic. Derek and I always say there was a global health crisis, but there was also a pandemic of social justice, of civil unrest, of economic duress. A political climate that has been fraught with a lot of stress. So there hasn't just been one input, if you will, to use a cowboy phrase, a county cowboy phrase. But you know what I'm saying? So, you know, what has navigated us through some of this change? And I guess the part B question of this is that is this temporary or is this where we're going? Right? We'll start with your last question first. It is not temporary. This is a permanent and it's an ongoing, evolving, you know, shift is what I think. What I see is number one, we all have in our job descriptions, other duties as assigned, right? That's a lot more of that is opening up for the CFO now. And I think what is driving that is number one technology. So we're in an age where technology and AI is helping us to make our jobs more efficient. It is providing analysis that we never could have provided before because it would have been too time consuming. One simple example that we see a lot of times that are nonprofit organizations in the accounting function is, think about entering transactions. You've got hundreds or thousands of transactions each month. If you're entering those in one by one, that's going to take a lot of time. Most financial systems now are capable of connecting to your bank and downloading those transactions and think about how much time that's freeing up. That's just one process of many that is freeing up more time for the CFO. And that CFO should now be shifting, taking advantage of that and shifting into analyzing the business, providing financial analysis and looking for opportunities for fundraising. So I think that the technology efficiency is creating a space for the CFO to perform at a much higher level. Yeah, I really appreciate your response to that. There's so much integration, automation we can use to streamline. I'm curious too, Andrew, if you're seeing, you know, kind of this new wave of leadership that says I'm ready to do things differently. I don't need to have a CFO sitting next door to me in the office. There's a lot of distributed workforce. I love the fractional CFO, right? Like I've seen great success in this space. And I really do think that now we've shown there's so many roles that can be done remotely that don't necessarily have to have a seat on that full-time roster. Are you seeing a switch in this as well? Yeah, I think that has been an ongoing, evolving area. And what we're seeing a lot is that, and our hope is at YPTC that the organization has somebody to do that transactional level work. And then we're able to fill in in that middle area, the controllership, the CFO area. And then we're providing information to the CEO so that they can have those discussions about business opportunities at the organization. And we're having those discussions as well and have a seat at the table with the board to facilitate those conversations. So I do think that there's a shift in not necessarily all the roles that need to be filled, but just how much time each of those roles is taking. And that fractional CFO controllership is highly valuable, I think. Yeah, and I'm seeing it in other spaces. I'm seeing it as marketing, even in development. There's so many fractional opportunities coming about into our sector. It's just fascinating to me, but I'm also curious, right? Because we've had your colleague on say, there's not enough accountant. So how are we gonna keep up with this modern, way of doing this type of work? We're busy. I think that's what it amounts to, right? You're very busy. Yeah, and that is absolutely the case. We've got baby boomers retiring, right? And not enough people filling and seeking out those accounting degrees and professions, right? So we are starting to see the beginning stages of the shortage and it's just gonna continue. So if you have children, if you're fixing to have children, please have the conversation how important an accounting is. It's not going away. It's only evolving and becoming more fun. We're focusing on less of the more administrative things and a lot more of the fun analysis piece. So yeah, that's my, so I'll get off my soapbox. No, stay on it. I love it. And I really do appreciate the fact, you know, of like working in the nonprofit accounting space is very different than the for-profit accounting. There's some nuances. There's a lot of uniqueness that we need to pay attention to. And I'm wondering if that's also why the traditional model of the CEO-CFO relationship is really kind of going to the wayside because Julia, how many boards have you served on where probably the banking person served as the treasurer simply because they worked at a bank? Yeah, and, you know, I think the thing which, you know, the very beginning of this conversation which is pretty magical. I love the way that you phrased, you know, looking backwards, the task aspect of getting stuff done, the paperwork processing, if you will, versus strategic leadership. And in one of the things during this conversation, it strikes me is that with the fractional nature of bringing in this outside talent, you know, HR, development, of course, accounting, finance, any of these things, you're bringing people into your organization that are seeing other things going on in the sector. And I think that's got to be an incredible value to say, you know, hey, I just witnessed this or I work with a group that's doing that so that we can actually move our organizations along more quickly. And I don't know if you see that, I know that there's a certain degree of, you know, compliance and you don't talk about your other clients, things of that nature, but just understanding what other organizations are doing, I've got to believe is a huge win for the sector. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, you know, one thing, what are nonprofit organizations always looking at? They're always looking at impact, right? And so how do we, you know, that's not a new conversation, but the method by which we can come up with that impact and the value that we're serving to our community, a lot of that information relies in the accounting function and the finance function. And that's a key integral part to assessing the impact, showing the impact to our communities that we're serving and ultimately our hope is that that brings awareness and dollars in the door to help us provide more impact, right? Yeah. It's so interesting. Well, we don't have a lot of time left, but I want to talk about kind of, as we're talking about the change of our sector, especially accounting and finance, you know, you started that part of this conversation with the demographic shift, we're seeing baby boomers retire and we're not seeing enough younger kids coming into the practice of accounting, public accounting, even finance. Is there a generational issue here that we need to be thinking about? And also, I guess, a tax to behavior. Our younger accounting and finance majors and talent, are they more interested in working on a team or do they want to be just doing accounting and finance? Like, what does that look like? Yeah, that's a great question. So as far as the generational impact, I'm going to avoid the ages trap and say that, no, there's, you know, anybody can do it, right? So I think that there certainly though, is a shift to embracing technology, embracing the new ways that we can make our jobs more efficient, that's extremely important. And I do think younger folks coming in have a better understanding of that to begin with and that's going to really help them. And I also, I just think that, you know, continuing to focus on the organization, their impact and providing that value to the CEO and being that thought partner for them is an integral part. I think, you know, as far as the team aspect, I think that there is a sense, especially with remote work that I think people are seeing the flexibility of being able to, you know, kind of provide their individual contribution away from a team. But at least at YPTC, we're always happy to see, we just had a staff meeting and saw each other in person and everybody was excited. And so we all are a team here. And so I think that that still is present, that people still want to be a part of a team, yeah. It's just, it's a different functioning team, I guess. Or the way we gather as a team is different. Well, I think there's so many great opportunities for this.  They can be a lot of fun and they provide a lot of benefits. You know, the YPTC team, you guys serve, you know, exclusively with the nonprofit sector, you're across the nation, you're doing so much amazing work and you have the support and services of other teams where I think Julia, like one person on that full-time roster just doesn't have access to what, you know, the modern role can provide. Yeah, I think it's magical thinking. And I think too that, you know, maybe accounting and finance and these roles and this redefinition of behavior will leak into other areas, right?  I mean... We're starting to see it a lot more. Yeah, and I just feel like those organizations that lean into this, in some ways, Jared, and I don't know what you're seeing as we wrap up, but it seems to me like you get the best talent, right? Because you can kind of then get people at their best where they are in their zone of genius and then, you know, let those other folks do what they are best at, right? 100%. Yeah, it's a new way. And I think the, you know, a few things that I wanted to hit on real quick for the modern CFO and this is in other areas too, just like you mentioned, Julia. The skills that we're looking for in a modern CFO, the new skills really are the leadership, the strategic planning, we mentioned technology, embracing technology and also change management because with these changes, we have to figure out how to layer in that change across the organization. So those are highly valued skills right now. That's really interesting. Yeah, that's fascinating because I think about all the kids when I was in college, you know, that went back in the day, it was the big eight. You know, when the big eight accounting firms would come to campus and recruit, you know, you could see those kids, you know, that they had like a certain look and they had a different, you know, a certain speak and they were kind of, didn't maybe exhibit those tendencies that you're talking about now, right? I mean, Were they wearing cowboy hats? No, they weren't wearing these either or nor were they wearing candy corn. So definitely not. Yeah, you know, we've always been super impressed. It's gonna sound like a commercial with the YPTC team. Truly every representative that has come, you know, to join us on the show, which is not easy because it's a live conversation that really, you know, chokes up a lot of people, Andrew, but really coming with those characteristics you mentioned, right? Like really coming to the table with that thought leadership with that level of expertise in so many different ways. And that's what I think Julia, our sector needs is, you know, it is certainly time to let go of the same old same old, you know, with technology advancements and the way in which we can work. It's really, it's past time, but now's a good time to start to embrace that modern role and how it can impact your mission even further. Absolutely. And I think this is an exciting time to focus in. I love, Andrew, that you brought up, you know, the leadership quotient, but also like the strategic aspect. I think a lot of times we think, oh, and I fall into this trap. You know, oh, I've got my task list and I got to check off, you know, tick the boxes and it's task oriented versus thought oriented, right? And so it's a new dawn. It's not just about getting the reports or the forms filled out. It's really more about, you know, thinking and being more of a holistic player. So a fascinating discussion. I mean, this is, Sarah, this is kind of our jam, don't you think? I mean, we love having these conversations. I do, you know, I really love bringing in the introduction to organizations to think differently, right? And to have that proven expertise that Andrew, you've brought and your colleagues from YPTC have brought is that this isn't new to certain individuals, right? It might be new to your organizational structure, but there's so much that has been tried and proven in a really positive way. So Andrew, thank you. I'm so glad that you joined us today. For those of you watching and listening, we've had the great pleasure of a cowboy himself, Andrew Miller, director of your part-time controller and you're joining us from Houston. So thank you for that. That's great. Thank you so much. Happy trails. Yeah. Hey, this has been a lot of fun and we are so appreciative. Check out yptc.com, it's short for your part-time controller. You can get a lot of information. It's free. They are an incredible resource, no matter, if you're a client or not, doesn't matter, but they just have tons of content on there to help you and your nonprofit navigate what it means to be in a modern relationship with your accounting and finance team. And it's an exciting conversation. And dare I say, it's an exciting time. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, been joined today by the nonprofit nerd herself, Miss Candy Corn. I love that, I love that. Well, you know, you either love or hate Candy Corn and as we were talking, Candy Corn has been getting a bad rap this year, so I wanted to represent it positively. I think that's true and spiders get a bad rap and so I wanted to represent them. Yeah. Hey everybody, we wanna thank, along with, you know, all the folks that really helped make the nonprofit show work.  These are the folks that, as we always say, join us day in and day out and it's really a remarkable thing to have them in our corner. They don't scare us at all, right, Jared? Nope. Not at all. It's fantastic to have their partnership. Fantastic, Andrew, to have you here. Dressed for the occasion, I appreciate that. You know, last year, I think YPTC team really kicked it off into high gear so we have big shoes to fill. Absolutely. Yeah, YPTC now owns Halloween, as far as I'm concerned. That's right. That's what we're hoping for. I hope that's what we're hoping for. Oh my gosh, well, you guys, this has been a lot of fun. It's been serious fun and I love this approach. You know, Andrew, it leaks over into so many parts of nonprofit leadership and so this has been a great, great conversation to have. And again, we have over 900 episodes with conversations that I think are super interesting and really can help you navigate the success of your nonprofit. 900 is frightening. That is a lot. That's what, the screamer, I love it. Okay, well, hey everybody. As we like to end every episode, we want to remind everyone to stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow.