5th Floor
Join us as Hilda Polanco, Founder and Managing Director of FMA, helps members to understand key questions to ask when assessing the financial health of grantees and grant applicants.
This workshop will focus on identifying key indicators of financial health as evidenced by grantees’ audited financial statements. It will provide grantmakers with the skills to understand their grantees' financial reality, with concepts and tools applicable to grantees across a range of missions and business models.
The session will address topics such as:
- What do audited financial statements tell us about a grantee’s operations over time?
- What are the key indicators that can help you gauge an organization’s financial health and sustainability?
- How does a nonprofit organization finance its operations, and how is this evidenced in their financial statements?
- What kinds of financial information should funders request and review in considering requests for funding?
Hilda will also briefly address the recent reforms to the OMB Uniform Guidance for nonprofits receiving federal funds. Thanks to changes made at the end of 2014, those nonprofits can take advantage of the clarified rules to recover more of their direct costs as well as reasonable indirect costs. Hilda will highlight the OMB changes that are most important for funders to understand.
Though this discussion will build on the workshop Hilda last presented for GWP in 2014, it will be available and relevant to any grantmaker who wishes to deepen their financial analysis skills.
FMA is a leading consulting firm dedicated to strengthening nonprofits so that they can fulfill their missions more effectively and efficiently. In addition to founding and leading FMA, Ms. Polanco is an adjunct professor at Columbia University; serves on the board of the New York Better Business Bureau; and is a frequent speaker at the New York State Society of CPAs' annual conference as well as the AICPA Not-for-Profit Financial Executives Forum.