John Gillespie, Founder of Beyond the Bottom Line, Joins Veris Consulting, Inc.

February 15, 2011

RESTON, VA -- Veris Consulting, Inc. is expanding its service offerings by adding John Gillespie, Founder and President of Beyond the Bottom Line (BTBL), a firm that provides interim CFO and other sophisticated financial management services to nonprofits and social enterprises. John will serve as a Managing Director in Veris’ Outsourced Accounting & Financial Management practice group which specializes in providing customized outsourced accounting and financial management consulting to the nonprofit marketplace.

"The addition of John and the resources of Beyond the Bottom Line will deepen and strengthen Veris’ ability to provide sophisticated, senior-level CFO and accounting services on an interim, co-sourced or fully outsourced basis, particularly to the nonprofit and social enterprise marketplaces," said Arturo Caraballo, President of Veris Consulting. "John has hands-on experience and a comprehensive understanding of the practical needs of management of nonprofit and social enterprises that will be extremely valuable to our client base."

Since establishing Beyond the Bottom Line in 1998, John Gillespie has advised numerous boards and executive officers on a broad array of financial management matters including budgeting, cash flow, financial processes and systems, sales and development forecasting, financial reporting and metrics, new revenue planning and due diligence.

"Veris is extremely well respected in the industry and we’re excited by this opportunity to expand our scope of services," John said. "The combination of resources will enable us to provide a wider range of capabilities for assisting nonprofits and social enterprises advance their missions."

BTBL’s past clients include more than 200 pre-revenue to multi-billion dollar organizations, including Acumen Fund, Ashoka, Barnes & Noble, CCH, Share Our Strength, National Cooperative Business Association and Missionfish. With more than 32 years of experience in financial and operating management, Gillespie’s expertise encompasses significant financial, human capital and information technology management.

About Veris:
Headquartered in Reston, Virginia with offices in Red Bank, New Jersey, Veris Consulting is a premier provider of highly specialized forensic accounting, outsourced financial management and survey research services to a diverse national and international clientele. Veris’ Outsourced Accounting and Financial Management practice group draws upon specialized expertise to improve bottom line results and permits executives to focus on growing revenue and controlling costs. Veris’ professionals provide innovative, customized solutions for a variety of client needs including litigation support and dispute resolution, outsourced accounting and financial management, and industry market reports and surveys. Visit www.verisconsulting.com to learn more.

About Beyond the Bottom Line:
Beyond the Bottom Line (BTBL) is an interim CFO and executive search firm specializing in helping nonprofits and social enterprises achieve greater financial success and advance their missions. BTBL provides objective, hands-on, senior-level financial help on an as needed basis through interim CFOs, outsourced accounting teams, financial assessments and executive search. Visit www.beyondtbl.com to learn more.

INSIDER IQ: Are You Ready to Grow? Do the Math

Size Up Your Finances with a Financial Assessment
While ignorance may be bliss, we don't recommend it as a financial strategy. You must understand your organization's fiscal strengths and weaknesses to set realistic goals for growth in the New Year.

So, how do you know if your nonprofit needs a financial assessment? Ask yourself these questions: Are your numbers transparent? Do you receive timely monthly financial reports? Do your financial reports assist you in making strategic decisions? Is your finance department integrated into your organization? If you answered ‘no’ to one or more, we recommend taking a good, hard look at your operations through these four phases of a financial assessment:

Phase One – Review Your Financial Processes
Begin your assessment by turning an eagle eye on how your financial operations are conducted:

• Looking for internal control weaknesses and redundancies in processing
• Following the money in and out of the organization
• Understanding reconciliation gaps
• Comparing your processes with another organization of similar size and sector
• Analyzing financial reports to ensure they are effective

Phase Two – Size Up Financial Systems
Next, you’ll want to size up systems on the market for your industry to:

• Identify automations that can take place
• Uncover capabilities within existing systems not being fully leveraged
• See what systems other organizations within your industry are using
• Determine whether or not you’re PCI-compliant

Phase Three – Right Fit Your Financial Personnel
Right-fitting your financial workforce is a key component of optimum functionality. Address this critical HR component by:

• Separating the task from the person to determine effectiveness
• Understanding your worker’s background and goals
• Encouraging development beyond technical accounting skills (leadership, communication, etc.)
• Using a Responsibility Assignment Matrix, or RASCI grid, to clarify roles and determine if anyone is overburdened

Phase Four – Form a Plan of Action
Use a grid to aggregate your findings from Phases 1-3 and create a prioritized plan of action. Add resources needed in time, people and funds, giving priority to those high-impact items that crossover between people, systems and processes. Now weigh priorities against access to resources to create a timeline, knowing that some tasks can be done simultaneously, some will be low hanging fruit (not a lot of work for a big impact) and some will be dependent on departments outside of finance.

Of course, it takes time, energy and resources to execute an effective financial assessment. It also helps to have a pair of objective eyes on the situation, unaffected by office politics and personalities. Beyond the Bottom Line provides financial assessments that are board-ready, and full of specific, actionable recommendations for improvement—something to keep in mind if you get stuck or desire an external, third party perspective.

LISTEN UP: Straight Talk from Nonprofit Trendsetters

Paul Eichelberger, CFO and Treasurer of the Baltimore-Washington Conference of The United Methodist Church, recently shepherded his organization through a comprehensive financial assessment. We asked him his thoughts on the process and its outcomes.

Can you tell us what spurred your organization to undergo a financial assessment?
I joined the organization in June 2010, and our Board took this opportunity to step back and assess our long-term needs and goals. They felt it was the right time to perform due diligence, to get a fresh take on what we did well and what we could improve upon. It was very important to them to get an independent view of our processes and performance, separate from our internal departments. So, basically, the time was right for a fresh start.

What were your main concerns going into the assessment? Well, we had two main mandates. The first was to get a clear assessment of our financial reporting and distribution from our overall processes and workflow to a deep dive into our AR/AP and financial transactions. You can’t improve a process that isn’t documented, so this gave us a chance to shine a light on every part of our financial machinery.

We were also increasingly dissatisfied with our AMS and financial systems – they just weren’t working well together. We needed to know whether to replace one or both of them, and, if so, what we could replace them with. The assessment would give us a baseline support for changes and suggestions for future systems. A third issue we wanted addressed was to make sure that our employee roles and responsibilities were dispersed properly. We’re running on a pretty lean team and we needed to make sure we had the right people in the right positions.

Were there any surprises or ‘aha!’ moments that stemmed from the assessment? Well, we were pretty surprised that the recommendation was to keep one of the systems we already have in place – that there was actually a fix to be made, instead of tossing it out entirely. Which was great! It simplified our life and saved us dollars and time.

Another unexpected result was that it enabled our financial team to really communicate to the board – and the entire organization – what we do and what our needs are as a group. It was quite educational, in that John and Jocelyn really challenged us to think differently about how we operate and we could now articulate our situation and needs to the Board, which was extremely helpful.

Any thoughts to share now that you’ve been through the process? Because we now have a detailed readout on our current processes, we’re free to upgrade those processes and take advantage of the most current technology to do so. When every detail is examined in the context of an organization’s big picture, you come out with a crystal-clear view of where you are and what needs to be done to improve overall.