Do candidates need government contract and grants management experience to be a nonprofit CFO?
It depends. If the nonprofit relies on government funding streams, it probably needs a CFO familiar with both grant management and the A-133 audit process required by the federal Office of Management and Budget. In fact, when we asked a focus group of eight nonprofit CFOs what advice they would give a for-profit CFO who was coming into a nonprofit that had enough revenue in government contracts to trigger an A-133 audit, they immediately shouted, “Don’t do it!” Several later qualified their responses, with one CFO saying, “There’s no way I’d recommend a CFO jump from a for-profit to a nonprofit with A-133 requirements unless the organization had the following pieces in place: a strong controller; a supportive board of directors; a good, reliable auditor; and timely reports.” One CFO explained the group’s concerns about such a transition: “Moving to an organization with a large enough amount of government funding to trigger an A-133 audit is 10 times more difficult than moving from for-
