What kind of for-profit experience in accounting and finance translates well into a nonprofit environment?
The CFOs with for-profit experience that we interviewed came from a variety of backgrounds, including money management, investment banking, private banking, consulting, and public accounting. The general consensus was that their experience with managing budgets, analyzing the return on investment of projects, and conducting audits served them well in the nonprofit environment. Bruce Skyer, Chief Financial and Administrative Officer of Nonprofit Finance Fund, found his treasury experience at Altria to be directly applicable to his work with the community development finance institution . Mike Dunn took his for-profit experience consolidating several family-owned businesses and applied it to his CFO role at Outward Bound when the organization was going through a geographic merger of the seven individual regional Outward Bound schools.
