Lack of role redundancy in small foundation

Jeanne Welch

FE Community - 


I am the Director of  Finance and Operations for a small community college foundation (5 person staff) in northern Arizona. I am responsible for all things financial, including about $20 million in investment assets, 160 endowed funds, and the only one who knows how to use FE. I am also responsible for maintaining the integrity of the RE database and online donation pages in Luminate Online. Our board of directors and college leadership are very concerned about the possibility of me being taken out of my role by an extended vacation or sudden illness/accident (not to mention I'm probably only 3 years from retirement) and are pushing me to suggest a way to identify a backup solution. Our administrative coordinator does gift posting and deposits and could be taught to run some of the regular reports, but has no accounting background. Have any of you come up with a creative solution to this challenge short of hiring additional personnel to share the workload? We are not likely to add any non-fundraising staff in the immediate future. I have considered establishing a relationship with a local independent contractor/FE expert just to expose someone else to how things are set up here, but I don't really need the day-to-day help. I would appreciate your thoughts.

Sannyasin Siddhanathaswami

Aloha Jeanne!

Interesting. We are fairly similar in size and
situation. We are an endowment with 75 funds and about $17 million
in investments (https://www.hheonline.org).

I’m also responsible for all things financial in
FE.

4 months ago we hired an accounting firm to do the
quarterly accounting. Not that we desperately needed the day-day
help, but wanted redundancy. Plus I have a ton of other
responsibilities and organizations to do accounting for, so freeing
up some time is super helpful. They are experts in FE and are
working out very well so far.

You might consider hiring them in some way for
redundancy or consulting at least.

https://fassaccountants.com

Best of luck! 

Sannyasin Siddhanathaswami

Jeanne Welch

Thank you! I'll take a look at their services.


Jeanne

Fernando Ibarra

@Jeanne Welch
Hi Jeanne,

How did you solve your issue with create some redundancy?

Jeanne Welch

@Fernando Ibarra I haven't really solved it, to be honest. I have been able to put together a detailed manual of my job responsibilities, with a calendar hyperlinked to the appropriate sections of the manual and links or screenshots of sample reports, with step-by-step directions for the more complex tasks, etc. I'm very happy with it as a resource for someone to step into my shoes but it's not the same as sharing tasks with another individual on staff on a day-to-day basis to ensure continuity. I have also made a concerted effort to expose one other, highly skilled learner on our staff (though not an accountant) to this manual and allowed him to observe some of my work so that he can at least speak to some of these processes, and I've increased his access to FE in case he gets called into service to try to get something done in my absence.

Sannyasin Siddhanathaswami

@Jeanne Welch
I'm sure you are already doing this, but I highly recommend doing screen recordings (with your voice as well). Walking through various tasks you do and creating a library of video tutorials. It is way more helpful than I imagined for someone new! It seriously backs up any documentation and doesn't really take much extra time to do.

Fernando Ibarra

@Jeanne Welch
I'm sure you will be fine. I was able acclimate to BB with just an hour worth of training and just diving in. I do like @Sannyasin Siddhanathaswami's idea. Creating a back up for me is a pretty hard challenge due to getting accountants to understand investments, especially in the private and hedge fund space without outsourcing. At some point I may consider creating some kind of business around that. Best of luck on your future retirement when that day does come.