Beyond The Bottom Line

Beyond The Bottom Line (Beyond the Bottom Line) assists nonprofit organizations and social enterprises through periods of growth, transition, and recovery by providing interim CFO services and recruiting full-time financial talent. Sometimes Beyond the Bottom Line is hired to provide other forms of assistance, including navigating an executive search on their client’s behalf, providing a third party financial assessment, or outsourcing a complete accounting team tailored specifically to the client’s present needs.

It should come as no surprise, given the current state of our economy, that there is an abundant need right now for exactly the kinds of insights, guidance and leadership Beyond the Bottom Line provides. In the words of their founder and president John Gillespie: “At times, prior methods to deal with financial problems did not work. Organizations need to create a new play book, or plan of action. The recession required new ideas, throwing old routines out.”

Mr. Gillespie takes an optimistic attitude toward the challenges the recession has presented. He says “the economy has created new challenges but also new opportunities” for nonprofit organizations and his firm. Always looking forward, Beyond the Bottom Line takes a serious interest, not only in an organization’s ability to manage its finances, but also in its deeply rooted strategies, methodologies and thinking habits that drive every move an organization makes.

Accordingly, Beyond the Bottom Line was very excited, this past November, to announce its new executive search and placement services. Sharon Kittredje is managing director of the new executive search and placement practice, which will be based in their San Francisco office, adding to the ranks of their New York office and Washington, D.C. headquarters. With fifteen years of executive recruitment and consulting experience to her name, Ms. Kittredje has provided recruitment services for hundreds of nonprofits and corporations. “We're excited about our Full Circle Search offering,” says Ms. Kittredje, which she describes as a “360-degree approach that includes everything from providing interim help to assessing the back-end resources to finding and on-boarding full-time financial executives”. Ms. Kittredje adds that “our executive search and placement services can add value to nonprofits’ strategic planning efforts and help ensure their future success”.

Mr. Gillespie is confident that the recession has altered the role of the CFO in a significant way that will prove lasting. “I think the CFO’s role has been of higher visibility during the last fifteen months,” he says. “We see the CFO playing a bigger role in organizations in the future, having to be more strategic, and having to forecast the future.” Mr. Gillespie believes that the economic downturn of 2009 forced CFOs to resolve problems “that previously were out of their realm”. He describes in unambiguous terms the crucial importance, for nonprofits, of reassessing and scrutinizing the function of CFOs. “Nonprofits that hope to survive and thrive in 2010,” Mr. Gillespie argues, “need to reevaluate and expand the role of the CFO to ensure that they can be more prepared to weather future economic storms”. What follows are highlights from Mr. Gillespie’s “Non Profit's Guide to Thrive in 2010”.

Mr. Gillespie’s tips are encyclopedic in scope. Beginning by emphasizing the importance of recruiting and retaining talent, as well as strategies to employ in achieving success in these pursuits, he goes on to discuss “revenue generation” and the need to “identify new funding sources” in the wake of the recession, which attenuated or eliminated many such sources. Mr. Gillespie’s third tip is to “leverage the power of social networks”. Social networks can help nonprofits make their mission known to a large community. Mr. Gillespie observes that many nonprofits have found that viral fundraising campaigns utilizing social networks and electronic media have yielded “greater loyalty and higher donations”. Mr. Gillespie’s fourth tip is that nonprofits and, more specifically, their CFOs, rigorously evaluate their organization’s programs and “demand accountability” if they are to be continued. “Gone are the days that nonprofits can afford to keep a low performing ‘pet project’”, writes Mr. Gillespie.

The final tip is conceptually simple, but key to Beyond the Bottom Line’s philosophy: “Run your nonprofit like a for-profit business”. This topic is what concluded CSRwire’s conversation with Mr. Gillespie as well. “Often nonprofits run their business mission first, business second,” Mr. Gillespie said. “Beyond the Bottom Line believes in running a non-profit just like a for-profit business”. Observing, in his tips for nonprofits in 2010, that pre-recession revenue levels may simply not be attained for a few more years, Mr. Gillespie is persuaded that “entrepreneurial business models” will be required for successful nonprofits in the days to come.

*Beyond the Bottom Line is thrilled to announce its recent B Corporation certification. A B Corporation is a new kind of company that uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. You can learn more about B Corporations at www.bcorporation.net.