Fractional CFO  ·  Nonprofit Sector

Your organization has outgrown
its finance function.
Let's fix that.

You're being asked to make bigger financial decisions than your systems can support — in front of boards, funders, and donors who expect clear answers. And sometimes, you're guessing. I help nonprofit executive directors get to solid financial ground, and stay there.

Start a Conversation How This Works See What This Work Looks Like
Matt Evans, Strategic Financial Leadership for Nonprofits
25+ Years of senior financial leadership
Fortune 500 Background in large-scale finance & operations
Nonprofit-First Sector-focused fractional CFO practice

Who I Serve

Built for the complexity of
mission-driven organizations.

Nonprofit finance has its own discipline — restricted funds, grant cycles, board governance, and the constant pressure to demonstrate financial health to funders and stakeholders. I work with executive directors who need a financial partner, not just a report. With organizations navigating growth or transition where a full-time CFO hire isn't the right answer yet. And with boards and finance committees that want a credible, forward-looking picture they can act on. Strong financial leadership is what makes everything else credible.

A Solid Starting Point

Before we can look forward,
we need solid ground
to stand on.

Most EDs I work with aren't the problem. They're smart, they're committed, and they care deeply about their mission. But their finance function hasn't kept pace with their organization's growth. The books are technically maintained, but the reports don't tell a clear story. The board asks questions that take days to answer. A funder wants to see a budget narrative and nobody is quite sure what goes in it.

The moment that stays with most EDs is not the audit finding or the cash shortfall — it's the finance committee meeting where a board member asks about restricted fund balances and the answer is "I'll follow up on that." That moment is avoidable. Left unaddressed, it turns into lost confidence — from your board, your funders, and eventually your team.

Before we talk about five-year projections or strategic growth, I want to understand where you actually are. Getting on solid financial footing isn't glamorous work — but it's the work that makes every other conversation possible. Think of it as making sure the wheels are on before we hit the accelerator.

Step 1

Financial & Process Diagnostic

A structured review of your current financial data, reporting, close process, and systems — identifying gaps, inconsistencies, and the highest-priority areas to address.

Step 2

Cleanup & Stabilization

Working through the backlog — reconciling accounts, clarifying fund allocations, rebuilding reporting templates, and establishing a reliable month-end rhythm your team can sustain.

Step 3

Reliable Reporting Foundation

Board-ready financials you can stand behind. Clean actuals, clear variance analysis, and a reporting cadence that keeps leadership informed and boards confident.

Step 4

Strategic Financial Planning

With a solid foundation in place, we shift to forward-looking work — multi-year modeling, cash flow strategy, scenario planning, and the financial narrative that supports your mission.

What This Work Looks Like

Common situations.
Real solutions.

Patterns that show up across nonprofit organizations — and what it looks like when they get resolved.

Funder Readiness

A regional nonprofit with a $2.8M budget has a major foundation presentation six weeks out. The books haven't been reconciled in months, restricted funds are commingled, and the ED can't answer basic questions about financial position. We clean it up, rebuild the board report, and prepare her for every question a funder will ask. She walks into that meeting with clean numbers and a clear story.

What changes: The ED can answer every question the funder asks — without hesitation, without follow-up emails, without fear.

Finance Function Rebuild

A human services organization has outgrown a part-time bookkeeper model. Month-end close takes six weeks. The board finance committee has stopped trusting the reports. We rebuild the close process, restructure the chart of accounts, and redesign the board report so it tells a story instead of just displaying numbers.

What changes: The finance committee re-engages. The executive director stops dreading board meetings.

Leadership Transition

A founding executive director announces retirement with no CFO in place and an audit scheduled two months out. The board doesn't know what they don't know. We go through everything — reconcile the accounts, resolve the backlog, support the audit, and put together a financial state-of-the-organization document so incoming leadership knows exactly what they're walking into.

What changes: The incoming ED starts with a clear financial picture instead of inheriting a mystery.

Packaged Services

Strategic financial leadership,
without the full-time overhead.

Each engagement is a defined scope with a clear deliverable — shaped around what your organization actually needs, not a fixed package designed for someone else's problem.

Getting Started

Finance Function Health Check

An independent, structured assessment of your finance operation from the ground up. I review your data, reporting, close process, controls, and systems, and deliver a prioritized roadmap that tells you exactly what to fix first and why. The right starting point for any organization that suspects its finance function has not kept pace with its growth.

  • Review of recent financial statements and year-end reports
  • Assessment of month-end close process and timeline
  • Evaluation of fund and grant tracking practices
  • Internal controls review, including authorization and oversight structures
  • Chart of accounts structure and reporting alignment
  • Staff roles and responsibilities relative to function complexity
  • Accounting system configuration and reporting capability
  • Board financial reporting quality and frequency
  • Written findings and a prioritized corrective action plan

You walk away with:

  • A clear view of what's actually working and what isn't
  • The top issues that need to be fixed first, in plain language
  • A practical roadmap to stabilize your finance function
Start with the Health Check
Building the Foundation

Process Cleanup and Stabilization

For organizations with capable people and genuine mission, but financial processes that have not kept pace. I work through the backlog, reconcile accounts, clarify fund allocations, rebuild reporting templates, and establish a reliable month-end rhythm your team can sustain. The foundational work that makes every other financial conversation more productive.

  • Account reconciliation and resolution of outstanding variances
  • Fund and grant allocation review and correction
  • Chart of accounts cleanup and restructuring
  • Rebuild of core reporting templates
  • Month-end close process design and documentation
  • Staff workflow clarification and task assignment
  • Transition to a sustainable, repeatable close rhythm

Audit Preparation and Oversight Support

Audits surface problems in organizations that do not have an experienced financial leader in the room. I work with your team to organize workpapers, reconcile key accounts, coordinate with your auditors, and prepare leadership and the audit committee to discuss findings with confidence. No surprises. No scrambling.

  • Review of prior year management letter findings and current status
  • Reconciliation of key balance sheet accounts
  • Workpaper organization and auditor coordination
  • Preparation of leadership and audit committee for auditor meetings
  • Review of draft financial statements and footnotes
  • Post-audit debrief and corrective action planning
Ongoing Financial Leadership

Board Financial Reporting

Board members who receive better information make better decisions. I translate your financial data into clear, narrative-driven reports that connect the numbers to your mission and the decisions that need to be made. Reporting your board actually understands, trusts, and acts on.

  • Design of a board-ready financial report template
  • Monthly or quarterly financial narrative with variance analysis
  • Visual financial storytelling using charts and summary dashboards
  • Cash position and runway reporting
  • Forward-looking context alongside historical results
  • Preparation support for finance committee and full board meetings

Budget Development

Annual budgets that reflect your strategic priorities, built with your leadership team, not handed down. Realistic, defensible, and credible to the funders and board members who scrutinize them. A budget that tells a story about where your organization is going, not just what last year cost.

  • Leadership interviews to align budget to organizational priorities
  • Revenue modeling by source, including grants, earned income, and contributions
  • Program and department expense build
  • Staffing and compensation planning
  • Scenario analysis: conservative, base, and optimistic projections
  • Board-ready budget narrative and presentation support
  • Documentation of key assumptions for funder and audit purposes
Strategic Work

Financial Strategy and Multi-Year Modeling

With a solid financial foundation in place, the conversation shifts to where your organization is heading. I build scenario-based projections and long-range financial models that give your leadership team a credible view of the future, and the confidence to make decisions based on it.

  • Multi-year revenue and expense modeling, typically three to ten years
  • Scenario analysis tied to specific strategic decisions and assumptions
  • Program growth and staffing investment modeling
  • Cash position and reserve trajectory projections
  • Sensitivity analysis on key revenue and expense drivers
  • Visual financial narrative for board and funder presentations
  • Annual model refresh and assumption update
"A nonprofit's financial picture doesn't just inform decisions —
it shapes how every stakeholder sees the organization."

Credible numbers, transparent governance, and clear financial narrative
are what separate organizations that earn trust from those that struggle to keep it.

Background

The experience behind
the work.

My career has been built around one consistent challenge: making complex financial pictures legible — to executives, to boards, and to the people who need to act on them.

Across more than two decades of senior finance and consulting roles — including executive-level work with Fortune 500 companies — I developed a deep foundation in financial planning, forecasting, operational finance, and organizational change. I know what disciplined financial management looks like under real pressure, and I know how to build the systems and narratives that help leaders navigate it.

That discipline now serves nonprofit organizations, where the stakes are just as real and the need for clear, credible financial leadership is, if anything, greater. My work leading finance for a prominent regional performing arts organization brought that experience directly into the sector — navigating endowments, restricted funds, board governance, and the full range of financial demands that mission-driven organizations face.

Nonprofit Finance Leadership
Regional Performing Arts / Nonprofit Sector
Senior Finance & Operations Leadership
Fortune 500 Organizations
Board of Directors
Outlook Nebraska (2006 – 2020)  ·  Flatwater Collective (2025 – Current)
MBA with Emphasis in Finance
Arizona State University  ·  University of Kansas

How We Work Together

A straightforward engagement
built around your needs.

Every engagement starts with a conversation, not a proposal. I want to understand what you're actually dealing with before we talk about what to do about it.

01

Conversation & Fit

We talk for 30 minutes. No agenda, no pitch. You describe where things stand — I tell you honestly what I see. If there's a fit, we define the engagement together: what we'll work on, how often we'll connect, and what a useful outcome looks like.

02

Embedded Partnership

I work alongside your leadership team — in the numbers, in the room, and at the table when it matters. You work directly with me, not a junior associate.

03

Ongoing Clarity

Regular reporting, board support, and strategic check-ins that keep your leadership team informed and your board confident in the financial picture.

Get in Touch

The first conversation
costs you nothing.

Most organizations start with a 30-minute call. No pitch, no pressure. You describe where things stand — I tell you honestly what I see and what I'd focus on first. You leave with clarity on your biggest financial risk areas, whether we work together or not.

Thank you — message received.

I'll be in touch soon.

Or reach me directly at matt@mattevansfinance.com