Welcome if you're just joining us. My name is Dora Wang. I'm president of Nonprofit Net of Greater Boston. I'm really excited to have you here today for our first presentation, our first webinar of our new Build to Do Good webinar series. I'm pleased to welcome, very excited to welcome Yvette Phillip, principal and owner of Cultivated Accounting. We'll get started in a few minutes. We are expecting a very large group here today and we just want to make sure that everyone has time to sign in and get situated. Please introduce yourself if you're comfortable so doing with the other attendees this afternoon. I'm joined by board member, fellow board member Bob Green, and he'll be the moderator for this afternoon's event. I see a lot of familiar faces. So excited to have you here and also new faces. So please share if you're comfortable so doing with the group. We're excited to have you here. If you're not familiar, Nonprofit Net is an all volunteer-run organization, and our mission is to support and advance small to medium nonprofits in the greater Boston area. All our programming is free. We don't charge. Therefore, it's not just small to medium, but the entire greater Boston and Massachusetts and beyond nonprofit community. I'm going to do our plug for donations. You'll see that I'll provide some information in the chat room where you can donate. We do rely on donations from the community to make sure that we can provide our services for free. Couple more minutes. Thank you for your patience. Yvette will be taking questions during the presentation. Bob and I will be monitoring for any questions in the chat and we'll pause from time to time. Check out our webinar for next month on conflict resolution. We're very ex excited to have this topic coming up especially during this time when we need to learn how to collaborate and understand each other more and more. One more minute again thanks for your patience. We are up to almost 40 attendees right now. So, it is a large group. We will be sending slides out afterwards. So, you'll be receiving them. This this a little bit longer. We’ll start promptly at 1:05. Great. I'll let you take over from here, Bob. [4:40] All right. Welcome everyone. So glad to have you here. As Dora, our our esteemed president said, I am a board member of the small but mighty Nonprofit Net. And what we exist to do is exactly why you're here today is provide wonderful resources for the nonprofit sector and encourage and invite wonderful speakers as we have today. So, I'm going to go ahead and introduce you. Yvette Phillip is a certified public accountant and a trusted financial advisor. she runs cultivated accounting where she brings extensive experience leading finance function of organizations with a wide range of revenues from 10 to $35 million. She's also very active on the board of non three nonprofit organizations with a real focus on community support particularly in areas of food insecurity and education. I was lucky enough to meet you through a professional networking group that were both members of. So I'm so delighted that she was interested in offering this webinar today as part of our series. So, you bet, thank you in advance and turn it over to you. Thank you, Bob, so much for the warm welcome. Hello, everyone. I'm just going to get myself set up so I can share my screen. One moment. Are you all able to see the screen? Thumbs up? Yes, we can. Okay, great. Thank you. All right. So, welcome again. Thank you, Bob, for the warm welcome. as Bob shared, I am Yvette and I will be facilitating today's workshop on financial hygiene and essentially shifting from just compliance to strategic financial management. Thank you all for sharing where you're coming from. It's great to see that we have various roles represented. So board members, I saw executive directors. Please do share any other roles that you may represent, such as if you're on a programs team or if you're a finance team member, I would love to just know who's in the room the virtual room today. All right so as Bob mentioned I have extensive experience in accounting and finance. I did begin my career as a public auditor, although still licensed as a certified public accountant. I have transitioned to various accounting and finance roles within the private sector, public education sector as well as the nonprofit sector. Now as the owner and operator of Cultivated Accounting, which is an accounting and advisory practice, I support mission-driven organizations who want to focus on their impact, and we offer the the proactive personalized guidance to provide financial clarity through strategic accounting and thorough financial management. So let us begin. [8:00 Topics] All right. So, here's how we're going to spend our time today. First, I'll share my definition of why I think it's important to have financial hygiene as part of our organizations that we're running. Next, we'll walk through the four stage financial management cycle, and to anchor off of some of these concepts, we'll follow a case study of an organization named Plant and Blossom Initiative. Plant and Blossom initiative is a representation of scenarios or examples that I have experienced, drawn from my roles as a nonprofit employee board member as well as a service provider. Then we'll have a discussion on shared practices and hear some of the things that are you all are doing within your organization. And finally, I will walk through a quick self diagnostic tool, and it will share a link so you can take these reflection questions to your teams. [9:23 Financial Hygiene is a Shared Practice] All right. So, why am I calling it financial hygiene? Because one, it's relatable. Everyone has hygiene that they maintain personally. So why not apply this concept of hygiene to the financial well-being of your organization? How does your finance team or whoever plays that role for that function in your organization spend time at the end of the month? Are they chasing receipts, approvals? And then on the other end, you have program managers trying to figure out how much they have left to spend in the budget. I would love to see a yes or an emoji if you can relate to this. Okay, thank you. Okay. All right. So, financial hygiene isn't about an annual cleanup for compliance reasons such as the annual audit or the annual form 990 that needs to be filed. It really is the daily financial operational habits that lead us to strategic financial management. A consistent rhythm leads to informed decisions. Financial management responsibilities don't solely rely on the executive director, the chief financial officer, or members of the finance team. It relies on every staff member that initiates an activity that has a financial impact on the organization. This includes the programming team when they reserve a space for an event, the administrative assistant who orders paper for the office, or even the development team that sends out donation appeals through postal mail. Every single one of these activities have a has a financial impact. Building a financial management habit goes far beyond the administrative duty. It really gives every staff member the clarity, the confidence to operate towards their mission without just waiting on the finance team. [11:35 The Four Stage Financial Management Cycle] So here is a continuous cycle where we move through daily financial transactions to inform decisions, aligning perhaps exist to an existing strategic plan or maybe a newly formed strategic plan. So, the four stages include front-end accounting, monitoring, reporting and reviewing and insight to action. For our case study, I will share perspectives from our representative organization, Plant and Blossom Initiative, which I will refer to as PBI going forward. All right, so let's test set the stage. This is what we know. PBI is a nonprofit organization with a small team that includes an executive director, program director, two coordinators, one operations manager and one administrative assistant. They meet their mission by facilitating events and workshops. They do training sessions and they run an online community, all to support the people that they serve. They receive funding from private foundations and individual donors. [12:50 Capture Accurate Data at the Source] So, stage one, front end accounting. This really just means how do we capture transactional details at the beginning of the workflow at the source when the action is actually happening. So let's look how this has played out for PBI. Originally, PBI relied on the administrative assistant to handle bookkeeping on behalf of the entire organization. The organization has three credit cards, one for the executive director, one for programs, and one for operations. At the end of the month, the admin would record the transactions from the credit card statements. They would request the supporting documentation, the details on each transaction. At the end of the day, they spent a really - not the end of the day, not just a day - but they just spent a great deal of time every month chasing details, especially from the program team. When PBI adopted the concept of front-end accounting, things changed. They implemented a new expense system where staff members were given direct access to their spending activity, allowing them to categorize their transactions by account, identify the funding source, add details to the memos, and upload receipts. Additionally, in alignment to their approval process, the transactions were reviewed and approved all within the system. Now implementing tech like this is just one way to make the shift to align to front-end accounting. Front-end accounting also looks like upfront planning. It is program managers or even members of the development team meeting with the Finance and outlining the spending plan for each grant. That way Finance knows what to expect and Programs team know exactly what budget lines they are spending from. This builds a productive bridge between the two teams, Programs and Finance. Front-end accounting also looks like real-time financial management. It looks like the team members tagging, submitting supporting documentation in the expense system at the time of purchase, or even if you establish an offline form. In any instance, a chance to indicate the funding source, the department and other details all before the month end is front-end accounting. Perhaps it's once a week in terms of a cadence. The key takeaway here is that front-loading financial information alleviates the administrative responsibility and frees up time and energy so that members - staff in the organization can focus on the mission. [15:50 Monitor Consistently] Next, we have stage two monitoring. So monitoring allows you to proactively address issues while there's still time to fix them. For instance, weekly checks on accounts receivable and accounts payable, tracking cash position, our spotting variances, just basically spotting variances before the month end with a small team. PBI, our organization that we're referencing, they engage external contractors across their programs and operations. Taking PBI's program team, the program team contracted a designer for an eight-month project, which was broken down in six milestone payments. Originally, invoice approvals were was somewhat passive. The contractor would send the invoice to the ops manager, who would send it to the admin for processing. And because the assigned agreement did exist, the money just went out. However, for PBI by month four and after three payments have already been administered, the program team was wondering where the draft for the module 2 was. So, the contractor actually didn't meet its second milestone. So, once PBI introduced a routine for monitoring vendor contracts, vendor oversight became a shared habit. Now, before a payment is sent out, the program manager takes a moment to review status against contract milestones. This simple routine check has saved PBI from overpaying on incomplete work and gave the program team a clear framework to hold vendors accountable. Monitoring can also look like tracking utilization of restricted funds. For instance, if there's a restricted fund that needs to be spent down over a 12-month period, and then we're at month nine and only can see 25% of the funds have been spent, and the finance team is expecting 75% at this point, does that mean that there's a risk of not meeting the donor's requirement? This key takeaway here is that monitoring shifts our team from being reactive to actively shaping the financial health of the organization. [18:25 Develop a Cadence for Financial Analysis] So, this next stage, stage three, is reporting and reviewing. And this is about establishing a consistent reporting cadence and making sure we provide the right information to the right audience. So back to PBI, we are now at Q3 and then based on - we're now at Q3, and based on strategic priorities, PBI has budgeted the year prior for this current fiscal year on a monthly basis. So, now that we're in Q3 and we're doing our quarterly review, the operations manager has looked at their budget versus actuals and notice that the travel line was $12,000 over budget. Now, as an ED, the ED at PBI can see this variance and just sees the $12,000 over budget, but the operations manager actually knows the story behind the variance. Being closer to the everyday activity, the operations manager realized that while they had budgeted for consulting fees, they forgot to budget for the travel reimbursements that the organization would incur because the consultants were coming from out of state. That review turned into the surprising overage. However, it's a lesson learned for next year's budget planning. Reporting and reviewing also means pairing financial numbers with programmatic metrics. So with PBI, they have monthly events. On the financial report, event expenses look stable within budget month to month. However, the program director knows that - has the data alongside these numbers, and can see the attendant the attendance count for each of the events. The program director noticed attendance drop significantly in the summer, making the cost per attendee higher. That operational review allows the team to ask strategic questions about summer programming. Another example is providing the appropriate level of detail. So, for instance, providing detailed reports to the Finance Committee to review. In PBI's case, the financial committee receives a full financial package every month, and that includes the statement of financial position or the balance sheet, statement of activities, also known as profit and loss, and a cash flow statement. The Finance Committee chair noticed a consistently high balance in the organization's PayPal account and asked, you know, why is there so much cash is sitting there? The executive director explained that online donors frequently donated through PayPal. And because the full financial package was provided, the finance chair raised a risk concern. Those funds sitting in the PayPal account weren't protected by FDI insurance, and PBI was also missing out on the opportunity to earn interest from a traditional bank. That review led to an immediate operational shift. So PBI set up an automatic monthly transfer from the PayPal account to their FDIC insured operations account. The key takeaway: regular financial reporting reveals the story behind the numbers, the context needed to make inform and strategic next steps. [22:18 Turn Financial Insight in Operational Adjustments] So, at stage four we move into insight to action. This is where we take what we've learned from our financial reviews into decisive actions. So going back to PBI, during a quarterly review, the team noticed that a specific restricted grant was trending significantly under budget for the upcoming quarter. At the same time, the program team identified an un unfunded need in another area of the budget. Because this was caught early, the executive director was able to reach out to the funder and request a budget modification. Instead of failing to meet grant commitments or having to return the unspent restricted dollars, PBI was transparent with the funder and was able to reallocate the resources where it was needed most. Regular financial analysis safeguards against financial exposure like this. We saw this same shift when PBI's finance committee chair spotted the risk of holding large cash balances in the non- FDIC account. This insight immediately led to a policy change for the organization, establishing an automatic monthly transfer from all third-party platforms. So that includes PayPal, Venmo or even donor management tools. So the transfer now in the policy now is to transfer those funds on a monthly basis directly into the primary operating bank account. Insight to action also looks like addressing operating waste. It looks like auditing your credit card statement and trimming redundant software subscriptions. Maybe that's realizing your team is paying for OpenAI, Claude and Superhuman all at once. Or paying for both Asana and Notion. Or running overlapping donor databases and accounting apps. Insight to action also means making proactive talent decisions. It might look like pausing on plan hiring and taking a fresh look at team capacity, making sure your existing team are fully aligned with your highest strategic priorities before adding headcount. Essentially, the key takeaway here is that financial insight should do one or two things. It should validate your current strategy - that it's on target - or it should activate you and/or activate a course correction on people, your resources and your mission. [25:22 Clarity] So, we put all four stages together, so that's front end. Hi. I just wanted to stop after that last slide. We've had a a couple of questions. Oh, yes. Yeah. Just wanted to - before you move on. Actually, going back to a couple slides. Karen asked how did they get the staff to enter the required information, and oh, actually, first one Karen asked was what accounting software do they use? Oh, is this for PBI? Yes. Our make believe organization. They use QuickBooks. A lot of my clients use QuickBooks as their accounting system. I didn't want to - I know there's different accounting systems that nonprofits use. Most of my clients use QuickBooks, but I also have clients that use Applos, Sage Intact, and other platforms. Related to that, Yvette, another person asked, does everyone then have access to QuickBooks or whatever other accounting program is being used? So, no. So, if you're - in this example for PBI, they have QuickBooks, which the accounting team really administers and the ED might have view only access and so forth. The system in which they would have access to in terms of to see their financial data could be platforms like Ramp or Bill and there's other platforms too that folks use that allow for multiple users to engage in the system and see their financial transactions that they make. And then one other kind of key question that was asked: How did they, PBI, how did they get staff to enter the required information, and were there any compliance or accuracy issues? It's more so a behavior change. I'm going to go back to financial hygiene and getting buy in. So, if for a lot of my clients and I'm going to use programming team as an example just because they transact a lot. So, if they have to buy things, they may have a company purchase card and they're swiping, and you know, they're making purchases and ordering things off Amazon. A lot of the technology that that exists today, you'll get a notification that says, hey, can you please upload your receipt? Right, away as soon as you swipe, there's like a notification. So that's a behavior change. Like okay, I know I made a purchase. Let me take a picture and have it uploaded into the system. And if you don't have the technology, maybe it looks like, you know, at the end of the week spending 30 minutes. I know I made all of these transactions. Let me just send it to finance. It may be like a shared inbox. Or let me upload it to this shared folder. But it's just being cognizant of your financial activity as a staff member and providing the detail ahead of time. Are there any more questions, Bob, that you see? No, there was a question about needing to switch accounting systems, but then someone else in the chat has responded that it might be a third-party app that integrates with QuickBooks. And QuickBooks does have some capability around expense management, but I find that third-party apps are more robust and more user-friendly. So, great. Thank you. I I think that's it for right now. No worries. Thank you for stopping me. All right. So, I was as I was mentioning the four stages really get you to the organization to the point of clarity. Sound financial management isn't just about the counting of pennies for the sake of compliance. It's about knowing exactly how your resources are being utilized, because those are the very same resources required to deliver on your mission. When you can map dollars directly to your outcomes, you align you gain alignment within your operations. When we operate without financial clarity, and this looks like just going with the flow or you know reacting to like as cash flow goes up and down, as it happens, we risk quietly compromising our own mission without even realizing it. But when you have clarity and you stop managing just by default, you really gain more certainty and confidence in terms of steering your organization forward. [30:36 Shared Practices] All right. So, up to this point, we looked at PBI and how they navigated through examples across the four stages. I would love to open up the floor and hear from you all at this time. You know what are some shared practices that you have built at your own organization? What's a habit from today that maybe I've shared that resonates with you that you're open to discussing with your team. So, let's start with stage one, front-end accounting. What does your team - how does your team capture right now financial information at, you know, at the source or is at the month end? Please feel free to drop your chat - your thoughts in the chat or you know I welcome you to come off mute and just kind of share your experience. Do we have any volunteers? Let me make sure I can see people. We can also add any comments in the chat as well. Thinking about stage one and you know front-end accounting which is really about frontloading information. What comes to mind for you? Here's your chance, folks. If you're comfortable, turn on your video and talk to a highly experienced nonprofit accountant, CPA. There's comments in the chat. Okay. Yeah. So we have Ellen who shared that their bookkeeper sends a spreadsheet every quarter and asks for details, but a lot of the information may slip through the cracks or get misaligned. Yes. I'm wondering, Ellen, would it be helpful if it was more frequent or to provide some of that detail ahead of time? We have someone, Susan, who has a hard time having her colleagues communicate the cost and needs. Yes. So, the communication across departments. Human behavior, Karen, yes, that is an effort. So, I totally understand that. And then as Shanaé, and I hope I'm pronouncing your your name correctly, has said, you know, do I have any advice for solo staff part-time operators? So, I would say, I will address first the people behavior. What I found is just repetition and communication. So that might mean sending weekly reminders. What we do with our clients, for example, every month we are sending like the same email that says, hey, send, you know, upload your receipts, please provide the detail, and we just give them all the answers so that they don't have to look for the information to comply. So we do that we just help people along until it becomes a habit for them. We're also able to utilize a lot of the functionality of the third-party apps that have auto automatic reminders and so forth. In terms of those who have smaller staff or your solo staff, it really looks like carving out time. And that could be, you know, Friday or Monday mornings just 30 minutes and just address like anything that needs to be addressed in terms of like the front-loading information and really heavily, heavily relying on, you know, the apps that you have. Okay, and thank you Ellen for that feedback there. And then we have where Diana, do you have any advice how to manage those above you requesting them to complete their receipts and to write their descriptions? Yes, we have that issue too. Managing up it could be a challenge. What we've found is just having a meeting again 30 minutes and running through and doing that frequently. Or if they if the organization has - is staffed, does that person have administrative support, could that admin could that person help on behalf of the person? So, thank you for sharing there. In terms of stage two and monitoring, are there any simple routines and check-ins that you already are doing that you can share with the group that has worked out for you all and in terms of what I've shared today? And that can be not just receipts and you know all of that, but even things like grant utilization. What does that look like for your organization? Are you all able to proactively know, okay, this is how much is left in a grant? Are we using it, are we utilizing the restricted grant as we expected? All right. I see a lot of conversation around in the chat as it relates to like monitoring and probably also reporting and reviewing. It's just the access to information and that's - and that's really huge with any organization and really going through and moving towards strategic management. It really doesn't happen in a silo. It needs to be a shared responsibility and what that means also is access to the information. So that means, you know, educating the staff on what a budget looks like even if it's their budget as part of a larger budget so that they can really see how what they're doing lives within the numbers in that way. And that really helps with the front end accounting the monitoring and that throughout the year, throughout the month, so there's less reactive behavior, as well as giving them an opportunity to review and look at the reports. And that's really what is important to move toward strategic financial management. Thank you. Just - and maybe it's because I do team building consulting, that I think that what you're saying about educating, bringing people together, really taking the time to help people get on board, strikes me as probably would be really, really important here. It's not just assignments, but it's in part leadership development and team building to really bring people together. And everyone in an organization has a leadership responsibility. They have financial hygiene. So, you know, bring them along. They truly should see themselves within, you know, the budget, the financial report. If they're looking at a number, you know, they can say, "Oh, no. My activity, what I did, I can I know it's in there." And that's really what you want. All right. Any other comments in terms of shared practices? What has worked for you alongside any of the four stages that you want to share today? Either within the chat or if anyone wants to come off mute and kind of share with share with the group. Or even if you you know have a question. Just a highlight. Talia says, I agree with this approach. It changes things like entering receipts from ugh, another annoying admin thing I have to do, to oh really this is an important task that has broader impacts for the organization. So it's really a perspective shift. Absolutely. And I just want to give a shout out we had a webinar back in February this past year and it was actually on leading a collaborative budget process. And that talked about importance of getting people out of their silos and and sharing. So that recording is available on our website and I've put that information for the link to our website in our chat. Great. Thank you. [39:48 Self Diagnostic] All right. So, this next slide here, my colleague Adele will drop a link in the chat, but it's part of, you know, just a tool that we created to really reflect on these four stages. And you can bring this back to your team or if you're managing this role on your own, this is something that you can do. But what I have here on the screen is just four - one question per stage here. And I was hoping that we can have a volunteer that can share and reflect on any of these questions that resonate with you. And I'll just read one read them out loud. So the first one, and I see in the chat and I I feel like this is going to resonate. What specific transaction types consist consistently stall the month end process because of missing backup or pending approvals? Someone asked Ellen, you asked, you know, is it really necessary to upload all the receipts? And I agree it is - it's a heavy lift. However, as nonprofit organizations, you need to substantiate a lot of what you're spending your dollars on. Sometimes, especially restricted funding, they want to know, okay, hey, how was this, how was this funding spent? So, it just makes it easier if you have all this information in your expense management system or your accounting system ahead of time. However, I will say it depends as long as you're in a in compliance with your internal financial policies and procedures, you just want to make sure that you're in alignment with that. So for example, I have one client where every transaction they want a receipt, they want the support and they just want everything. But whereas another organization is like if something is $75 and below, they just want a very detailed memo, they don't necessarily want the receipt or to chase the receipt. So, it really depends. So yes, agree with you, Susan. Yes, the snapping of the picture of the receipt and emailing it, texting it, however you can get it to the finance, that's helpful. So in terms of monitoring, how does who is actively tracking vendor contract deliverables between over time in your organization? I find in my experience that almost once the vendor contract is signed, it's like payments is on autopilot, but there's no one - sometimes there's no one actually owning the relationship to to ensure that you're getting what you agreed to. And that's you know, has a financial impact. Can anyone resonate with that? Please feel free to add to the chat or come off mute. Gary is agreeing with you. Oh, that's what they do. Okay. I see Anna with the facilities projects. Yep. Like this is Donna. I would say for the monitoring what usually happens in my organization, you know, they work on the contract, a CFO puts it into our system and we use Sage Intact. Oh yes. And then, you know, we get the invoices in, and the program manager has to approve. But there are definitely times where we're going back and saying, "Are you sure the work was done on this?" So there are a few cases like that, but we really do rely on the program manager or budget manager who's managing that relationship to make sure that everything is done and that we're staying on track. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Donna, for sharing. And what was key with what you were saying is it's that finance is not on their own. You said you really rely on the programs team because they're closer to the work. So they should - they have insight in terms of what's happening there. All right, thank you. So in terms of reporting and reviewing, and I know some folks already left some comments, do program leaders receive periodic budget versus actual? Can they explain the story behind their numbers? For us, we have clients that provide that information to their internal teams on a quarterly basis. I've been in situations where when I was working at the school level, grade leads or principles will receive their financials every month to really kind of see the expenses and see how they're doing against budget. How does that look like? What does that look like in your organizations? Okay, we have Diana who shared that their financial committee reviews budgets on a monthly basis. So, budget versus actual. That's really great. And then Lynn, I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly, has shared that they provide monthly reporting on a monthly basis as well and that has really helped them track their spending. And then we have Ellen who had - who shared that budget versus actual is done at the end of the year in order to apply for the following year's grant. And then, but your question is how does one compare budget versus actual? So, a lot of systems, and I know QuickBooks, Sage Intact, Applos has this functionality where you can actually upload the budget within the system and then as actuals are happening and then recording it from month to month or annually, you should be able to generate a report that shows you budget versus actual. And then also there's, you know, you can also do it manually within a spreadsheet as well. All right, we have a question from Casa de la Cultura. What advice do you have for an organization that is starting to build its infrastructure limited funding? Oh yes. I would say definitely invest in the accounting system. So, QuickBooks is a popular one, especially for newer organizations or nascent organizations. You want to spend time on the design. So before just jumping into the system, you know, think about how money is coming in, how how are you going to have money go out? Are you going to use a third party system? How do you want the accounts to look like? I would say, you know, if you don't have the internal capacity for setting these things up, connecting with organizations like Nonprofit Net to connect with like consultants or there might be technical assistance in the community that the organization is in that may be able to provide funding to like really get that support to set up these things. But I do think investing the time and financials in a system that can help support you and your organization is important. And I would apply - and you asked would you apply the same principles - yes, I would apply all four stages, no matter what stage you're in, there's some level of all of the four stages that need to be followed. It may - it's the degree of effort - not effort, but the degree of complexity may vary, but essentially these stages are necessary. You have one quick question from my experience around reporting reviewing. How - I've experienced a lot of boards who really don't know how to read the financials and so any quick thoughts about what is necessary to share with boards and and how to bring boards up to speed? What what role do they play in all of this? So I would say that board it depends on the stage what your board is. Some boards are working boards, some boards are, you know, hands-on working or just like hands off because the internal team works there. But if you're at a stage where the board, you know, needs to be educated, I would say definitely the standard financial. So the balance sheet is important. I find that even the boards that I sit on, I don't see a lot of the balance sheet presented, but that's important. That's part of the financials, the statement of activities, the profit and loss to really see, you know, what revenue is coming in, what what's going out, the case, the cash flow statement. So those three standard financials. Additionally, if there's a budget that exists and you really want to show budget versus actual, like how are we performing against budget and the narrative around that. There's always a story behind the numbers. There's the numbers just don't live on its own. It’s representative of the activity of what's happening in the organization. So how are you showing that? Thank you. Yes. So yes, I see that there's some folks in the chat that are in departments or they lead a department and may not know their spending or their budget for spending. It perhaps you know in addition to reflecting through the tool that we shared in the chat, just having a conversation with finance and just say, hey, you know, what is our budget - is that something that could be shared? I will say sometimes depending on the organization the funding design or the funding model of the organization may be complex, that it's - it may be hard to break it down by department, but I think just showing that curiosity and asking questions is good. You may not get a budget for your entire department, but if you know that your activity is tied to a certain grant, you can ask, "Hey, you know, what part of the grant is the activity that I'm doing really impacting?" You know, I want to know. So, there's a couple of comments in the chat about information hoarding. Yes. Either an executive director or a department head not wanting to share the information. So, you know, it almost feels like going back to the beginning of your presentation. Why is this so important for organizations? Yeah, when I hear that - information hoarding, what I ask is how do you know what to spend on? Like if you don't have something to anchor off, like what instruction are you given? Because it has to originate from somewhere. It's probably the org culture. There must be some reason why it's being held tight to the vest in that way. But I think it's starting to ask, like hey, you know, I know that I'm ordering from Amazon for this thing. You know what does it cost to actually do this event? Is there like a budget for it? Like what do I need to keep in mind? I think just starting from a place of appreciative inquiry, maybe that can help. And if you're showing interest in terms of like, you know, how am I impacting the financials, maybe that can open up the conversation or the idea that, you know, this is the budget and such. And you're going to improve accuracy, you're going to improve planning, by sharing - making this collaborative rather than information hoarding. Yeah. And I, you know, if you're a leader, oh, one comment, if you're a leader and you're in charge of a budget, I would question - not question - I would think that you would want those who are closest to the activity to be engaged. Because if you're creating the budget, you might miss something that might be important to them or that they have in mind for a successful event or a successful activity. So really engaging more people really provides more insight in terms of like the budgeting and then also the activity throughout the year. So, we have a question from Kisa. You're on mute. Okay. Hi Yvette. It's not more of a question, but just adding on to the last point that you were mentioning. I've been in an organization where everyone was aware of the budget from the top management to the lowest employees on the hierarchy. So I think is more of a culture thing where managers would sit and they would make their contributions. Of course, the finance head would make adjustments to what the requirements that are coming from department heads, but everyone would be aware. So, it wasn't more of a finance thing. It was more of an organizational thing. Because the moment it becomes a finance thing, everyone is just like nah, it's it's it's their problem, you know, kind of thing. But when everyone is aware of the budget and everyone knows that this is the limit, this is what we're supposed to spend on, I think it becomes more easy, even on the people management side, because I noticed a lot of questions were like people asking so how do you get people to comply? How do you get so I think it's making everyone a part of the budgeting process, and yeah, I think that helps too. Yeah, just raising awareness. Yes. Thank you so much. There's a comment in the chat that the worksheet is really helpful. So, someone's already checked it out. Oh, yes. Thank you. Yes. So, are there any questions that I missed that you're you would like me to answer? I just want to make sure I can address those. All right. Well, I I appreciate just given the opportunity just to share my insight around financial management and also all the engagement that I was able to see in a chat - asking questions answering them amongst yourself. That's really great. And just thank you for giving me space. Oh, you bet. Thank you so much. Just very thoughtful and very thought-provoking clearly. And thank you so much for sharing the resources that … As you can probably see that you're getting lots of nice feedback on the Zoom screen. So, thank you so much for it. And thank you all for for joining us for this month's webinar. We’ll be going for the next few months every month and next month in fact we'll be talking about conflict resolution skills in the workplace and with Ana McDavitt and Laura Weiss of the resolution center. So, I hope you will put that on the calendar, and I hope we will see you again.