 | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  |
| Who am I? |
| SERVICES & EXPERTISE |
| My passion is for organizations working in the areas of social and economic justice and personal and environmental sustainability. I definitely have a point of view, and am deeply concerned about maintaining and increasing the effectiveness of the groups I support. Their voices are vital in our future. I do this work because I care about it. Organization of this page: Current Status / General Overview of What I Do and Think I Know / Bio (and at the very bottom are links to my periodically updated, though not ever *quite* current: C.V., summary of consulting engagements, and list of formal public presentations). ## Current Work Status (updated 5/15/2013): From April 2011 until early 2013, I worked part-time as the finance manager for Portland's River Network, a great group combining my favorite strategies: organizing and capacity building but in the context of a specific issue focus: important environmental preservation work. I still am deep into their systems, and play a technical advisory role when asked. Since the start of 2013, I have been pinch-hitting at Pacific Business Group on Health, a San Francisco health policy "think tank" of a sort (that seems like such a diminutive word), which gets its power and throw-weight from a membership of "purchasers" of millions of health insurance policies, and from the brilliance of its senior staff leadership. The work is sufficiently fascinating to me that I'd almost rather be on the program side than the finance side in this case, which is a rarity for me, but I don't bring the expertise that their program staff bring. I say pinch-hitting because it came about through the tragic and untimely death of Charlie Quaid on 1/1/13 (R.I.P. Charlie). We are in the final stages of hiring an ongoing Controller to report to the newly hired C.O.O., Clare Hansen-Shinnerl, and I expect my role to wind down by the end of June and to be looking for projects at that point. ## Back to the topic: About Me: Be clear: the opinions on this page are mine and mine alone, as are any errors or slanders :-) In all of my work, my emphasis is on training and capacity building and plain language explanations for managers, directors and officers. Tax, compliance and accounting topics intimidate many people. Valuable information can be obscure. This weakens our sector. I want to make it accessible. I have handled engagements ranging from one hour to nearly half-time for eighteen months or more (list is linked below).
|
| BIO |
| My overarching passion is to make financial information accessible to nonprofit managers, boards and advisors. I also thrive on spotting the differences between GAAP and TAX and working to get organizations on top of these issues so they don't end up being ambushed by unforeseen results in one or the other arena depending on how any transaction is structured or characterized. I received my B.A. from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio in 1977, and my M.B.A. from the University of Portland in 1984. From 1987 to 1992, I directed the Financial Management Training Program of The Youth Project, a grant making public charity working nationally to support grassroots community organizations. Through this program, I provided technical assistance and advice on financial management and tax compliance issues to over one hundred very small, grassroots, community organizing and issue advocacy organizations nationally. From 1990 to 1995, I was CFO of the Association for Portland Progress, then a sophisticated business league with an affiliated public charity operating on a combined six million dollar budget to preserve the successful dynamics of downtown Portland, Oregon. From 1996 to 2004, I worked as a nonprofit specialist (senior paralegal) for Silk, Adler & Colvin (now Adler & Colvin), a premier San Francisco law firm providing tax and corporate counsel to a wide variety of nonprofit organizations. From June 2007 through July 2009 I was Director of Client Services for Leventhal Kline Management, Inc., a small philanthropic advisory services (nonprofit back office management) firm in the Bay Area. Continuously since 1984, I have maintained a private practice providing advice and training to nonprofits (and a few small businesses) on financial and tax compliance issues. My favorite compliment on an evaluation form after a workshop is "I expected to be bored and I wasn't." |
| I was honored to present for the annual AICPA Not-for- Profit Industry Conference held in Washington DC in June, every year from 2002 through 2012 - ten consecutive years! I was deeply honored to spend eight years on the planning committee, the final two as "tax-lead" (sort of co- chair for tax, along side the every engaging and charismatic Bob Mims who was overall conference Chair). I learned much from this experience - and the group of smart colleagues; it helped me to refine my workshop techniques. I have presented three times, and was on the planning committee once (2004) for the annual AICPA Not for Profit Financial Executive Forum held in November on the West Coast (moving from San Francisco to Anaheim in 2009). In 2004 I spoke on GAAP v. TAX issues, participated in two panels at the 2006 conference, one on policies & procedures and the second on Challenges Facing CFOs; I co-presented a session on the management practicalities and recordkeeping & reporting issues of tandem organizations ((c)(3)/(c)(4,56)) at the 2007 conference. I have also twice presented professional seminars for the San Francisco Chapter of the Not-for-Profit Interest Group of the California Society of CPAs, three times for the annual statewide Oregon Society of CPAs Not-for-Profit Conference held in the Spring, and twice for the New York State Society of CPAs' annual Exempt Organizations Conference in December. My CPA Society seminar topics have covered a range of public policy advocacy issues, public charity status and the public support tests, grey areas in ethics, and GAAP vs. Tax issues in nonprofit accounting. In 1990 (revised in 1992) I wrote and self-published Managing for Change: A Common Sense Guide to Evaluating Financial Management Health for Grassroots Organizations, and I wrote a chapter entitled “Navigating The Tax Implications of Earned Income” in Andy Robinson’s Selling Social Change (Without Selling Out), Jossey-Bass, 2002. An earlier draft of that chapter is on the Downloads page of this site. For specific details, you may want to see my C.V. (résumé) and/or a summary list of my consulting engagements (which shows all my clients, location, type of organization, and what I do/did for them). For my work as a trainer, I have compiled a list of my formal public presentations, (for the most part not including presentations tailored for a single organization or network, and certainly not when there is/was controversy). |