Impress Your Auditors Nonprofit Cohort
A 6 week group program (with 4 additional weeks of support) to walk nonprofit finance staff through preparing your financial books for your annual audit, step-by-step
(For people referred by Carol Wilson)
July 21st - August 29th, 2025, with ongoing support in September
Who is this for?
This program could be ideal for you if you:
do finance work for an organization that is small or mid-sized (up to about $7 million annual budget)
have a fiscal year-end in June (the timing of this cohort is optimized to help June year-end organizations prepare for your audit between the end of your fiscal year and your audit. Organizations with other year-ends are welcome to join. Your books will benefit from this clean-up process any time of year and will make your preparations for your audit after your fiscal year-end so much easier when it’s time.)
use accrual accounting (or want to start building an understanding of accrual accounting before transitioning your organization to accrual accounting)
can commit a group culture that supports the rights, dignity, and safety of all people, including people for whom those are not a given in our society, including people of color, queer & trans people, disabled people, neurodivergent people, people of all ages, immigrants (both documented and undocumented),
If you’re a nonprofit finance person, maybe:
you’re intimidated, knowing you have an audit coming up you need to prepare for
you’re an accidental/incidental nonprofit finance person and are figuring out before the rest of your org that nonprofit accounting is more than just data entry, and you need support
you transitioned to nonprofit accounting from for-profit accounting and want to finally feel like you have a solid handle on nonprofit GAAP
you’ve done several audits, you’re starting to feel like you get the hang of it, but could really benefit from having the preparation process laid out step-by-step
you struggle with how isolated you feel as (one of) the only finance staff in your org and would be thrilled to work through the complex parts of it in community with others
or you have plenty on your plate and need help carving out the time (and making sure others in your org know to respect the time) that it takes to prepare for the audit
If you’re a nonprofit ED or other supervisor to a finance person, maybe:
you feel like supervising your finance staff is a part of your job you’re not well equipped for
you wish you could provide your finance staff the knowledge and skills development to help them grow in their role but just don’t have the background to do that for them
you feel nervous leading into audit season, not feeling 100% confident that your finance staff has the support they need to succeed as well as you want them to
If you’re an independent bookkeeper/accountant who serves nonprofits, maybe:
you feel isolated in your work and really want to build community with others who know what it’s like to be in the trenches of preparing for an audit
you know that you could use support delivering great audit results to your clients
Why now?
We are in such a stressful moment in the nonprofit field. A few nonprofits are thriving, but so many of you are under heightened stress, either having already lost funding or concerned that you will soon as the impacts trickle down to those who don’t directly receive federal funding. It’s impossible to predict what further threats are in the future for nonprofits.
But it’s clear that reducing any vulnerabilities, including getting financial record keeping practices in order, is good prevention to set your organization up as well as possible to withstand whatever is coming. And getting good clean audits, which lead into solid 990s, is one important piece of the foundation of that.
If you want help getting there, I hope you’ll consider joining us.
What you might be dealing with:
Do any of these feel familiar to you?
I feel murky on exactly how I’m supposed to be tracking revenue
I know the Statement of Financial Position/Balance Sheet is important, I provide them to my ED and board every month. Perhaps I understand pretty well how to keep it cleaned up and reconciled, but could use some pointers and a boost. Or perhaps I really have no idea what I should be doing with it aside from providing it to the board each month. Or somewhere in the middle.
When I’ve gone through an audit before, I’ve struggled to make sense of some of the requests. Like, what is a “schedule”? Or, I know what a schedule is, but I sure could benefit from having templates and watching someone fill them out.
For the Statement of Activities/Profit & Loss, I struggle to know how to make sure expenses are put correctly to the different classes. Or, I only really vaguely know that’s something I’m supposed to be doing anything about.
What will you accomplish in this program?
After completing the work of this cohort program, you and your peers will have:
All revenue (grants, pledges, contracts) entered correctly in the appropriate fiscal year
A clean and reconciled Statement of Financial Position/Balance Sheet as of the year end, where you trust all of the balances and have documentation to support them
A Statement of Activities/Profit & Loss where the expenses are accurately allocated across the classes, and you have the documentation to support the allocation
Clear ideas of how to improve your processes to make next year’s audit prep simpler
The calm feeling of knowing that you’ve done all you need to to prepare your books for the audit
New relationships and connections with other nonprofit accounting/finance folks who can be mutual support in this often isolating field
Why learn from me?
Like so many people who end up in nonprofit accounting, including many of the leaders in the field, I fell into this field 20+ years ago without an accounting degree, and did 100% of my learning on the job. For those of you who are somewhere on that journey, I’m telling you this to let you know that I’ve been there, I get it. Being the person with the most knowledge about nonprofit accounting around while being unsure of how much I knew or didn’t know has been quite nerve wracking countless times!
Some of the times where my learning was the most accelerated in those 20+ years was when I was taking my organizations through a review or audit. I learned so much over the years that at my last job at API Chaya (www.apichaya.org), I took the organization through 4 audits, including 3 single audits (audits on your federal funds) and got through the audits with no findings and no adjustments. Meaning, they didn’t find any major breeches in controls processes or other accounting processes, and, after all of their review of our books, they didn’t find any numbers that needed to be adjusted.
The auditor that worked with me during that time appreciated working with me enough that when a client needed an auditor, he overbooked his client load to fit us in because he knew that my oversight would make the process smooth.
All of this has made me passionate to help others build their skills, too. Audits can be intimidating, scary, a burden. Or, they can be a time of tremendous growth and learning that help you, wherever you are on your nonprofit accounting journey, feel more confidence and feel like you have your feet more solidly under you.
Why join a cohort program?
You could hire me directly to do your audit clean up. I would be thrilled to do it. And maybe that’s actually what’s best for your organization. (Click here if you’d like to schedule a time to talk about this option.)
But, that wouldn’t build your organization’s internal capacity for preparing for an audit.
I could train and mentor you/your finance team one-on-one in how to prepare your books for the audit. I’m also available for this and would be thrilled to do it. (Reach out here to schedule a time to chat about this.)
Both of those options would be significantly more expensive, likely out of range for what many organizations have available or would feel is appropriate to put toward preparing for an audit. The audit itself is already such a big ticket item! Reason number one to sign up for this program is that the cost is at a level that is easily justifiable for the value that your organization will be getting.
Plus, neither of the above options would give you all of the tremendous benefits of learning and working in community with other finance folks. The feeling of camaraderie, of knowing that you are going through hard things together with all of the other cohort members. Getting to learn from each other’s questions. Having someone else ask the “stupid question” that you might have felt too embarrassed to ask or didn’t even know was a gap in your knowledge.
Also, learning and doing together means that each participant gets an opportunity to learn in multiple ways, which will deepen and strengthen the learning. I’ll teach you the concepts. You’ll get to watch me model various processes for you. Then, you’ll get to do it yourself and see what problems you come across when you’re trying to implement.
And you’ll get a chance to then ask questions, get answers, and try again. You may have the opportunity to teach others in the group if there are questions they have about things you’ve figured out. When you’re approaching your next audit, this knowledge will be so much more accessible to you after engaging in the learning in so many different modes.
What’s the schedule?
Each week, we will focus on learning and implementing one set of tasks related to preparing for the audit.
Week 1, week of July 21st: Revenue Recognition (When should your income be counted?); Document filing
What are the common errors in how and when revenue is recognized? How do you ensure you’ve recognized the right amount of revenue in the correct period? How should your documents be filed for ease of retrieval during the audit?
Week 2, week of July 28th: Statement of Financial Position: Assets (What you have and what others owe you.)
Bank accounts; Accounts Receivable; Fixed Assets; Prepaid. I will lead you through how to make sure your balances are accurate and that you have documentation (schedules) that supports those balances.
Week 3, week of August 4th: Statement of Financial Position: Liabilities (What you owe)
Thankfully, Accounts Payable and Credit Cards are usually pretty easy to clean up, because Payroll Liabilities can be a bear!
Week 4, week of August 11th: Statement of Financial Position: Equity (The financial value of your organization)
The most important thing about equity is how much of the value of your organization is restricted versus unrestricted. At the end of this week, you should have determined which of your grants are restricted; how much is still restricted at the end of your fiscal year, and have a spreadsheet (schedule!) showing all your work.
Week 5, week of August 18th: Statement of Activities: Functional Expense Allocation (how much of your expenses are Program, Management & General, and Fundraising)
What expenses are ones that support the whole organization? How do you calculate what percentage of those expenses should go toward Management & General, Fundraising, and each of your Programs? How do you adjust your books to reflect that?
Week 6, Week of August 25th: Cushion week
The planned schedule for moving through these tasks is quite aggressive! I’m scheduling in an extra week. If we decide we need to slow down a bit in the earlier weeks, we can push some content out to this week. Or, if there’s something that’s still lingering for many participants from earlier weeks, we can dig into it and get clarity here. If we’re all done by now, we can get together and celebrate!
Weeks 7 - 10, September: Ongoing Q&A
Some of you may complete the work in the 6 training weeks. But for those who don’t, I will provide ongoing Q&A calls for an additional 4 weeks.
What will each week look like?
Monday, noon - 1 Pacific time: Live webinar by Sofia
I will go over the concepts for the week. And then I will demonstrate key tasks for the week so you can watch it be done. Homework will be assigned for the week.
Wednesday, 11 - 1 Pacific time: Coworking (unhosted)
If there is enough interest by the participants, this will be a time where participants can log on to a call together and each work through their own homework for the week. Participants can self-organize if they’d like to have it be quiet coworking, or if they’d like to have it open for participants to ask questions out loud or through the chat, or if they’d like to actively work through processes together.
Thursday, noon - 1 Pacific time: Q&A session
Participants will bring questions/issues that have come up for them during the week as they’ve worked through the homework. We will address as many questions as possible during this time.
In between sessions
During the week, participants can also be in communication through a text-based format to ask questions, get advice, encourage each other, celebrate wins, etc. I can answer quick questions in this format. If questions arise that need longer answers, I will bring those to the weekly Q&A session.
What will you need to be successful in this program?
Technology:
Ideally, you would be able to attend live calls with the Zoom video call on one screen and another screen available to open your accounting software, excel, etc, to be able to follow along during the call. Zoom is a free software for participants.
Time:
There are four hours of calls available each week. The Training call & the Q&A call will be recorded and can be watched after the fact during the course and for two months after the course. However, it would be best for your learning if you’re able to attend those live.
The amount of time that it will take to keep up with the work of this program, in addition to the calls, is impossible to determine without knowing the current state of your books and your audit preparedness.
However, I do recommend that you use the fact of this program and its timeline to be able to clear your schedule as much as possible of non-necessary trainings, meetings, non-routine tasks to allow yourself the best chance of completing the work within the timeline of this program.
How much does it cost?
$1500 for the first employee of your organization/accounting firm
$1300 for each additional employee
Sign up by July 1st to receive an early bird discount. Pay $1350 for the first employee, $1170 for each additional employee.
What if we need and/or want more support?
In addition to the community context of the training, some organizations may prefer to also have one-on-one attention from me.
What are some examples of how you can use one-on-one support?
Meeting with the ED or supervisor of accounting staff to answer questions, help them feel connected to and supportive of the process
Review books prior to the training/early in the training to identify any specific areas to focus on
Troubleshoot sticky challenges that the finance staff isn’t able to address
Post-training support in preparing documentation for the audit requests
Direct support during audit field work week and beyond, including helping translate audit requests, meet with finance staff & auditors to support ease of working relationship, etc
Rates:
My regular hourly rate is $200/hr.
If contracted before July 31st, additional hours can be purchased at $175/hr.
If contracted before August 31st, additional hours can be purchased at $185/hr
If contracted before August 31st, 5 hours can be purchased for $850, equivalent to $170/hr.
After that, the regular rate of $200/hr will apply.
Cancellation policy:
If cancelled a week before the training, by July 14th, you will be refunded the full amount, minus a $50 admin fee.
If cancelled by a day before the training, by July 20th, you will be refunded 75% of the registration fee.
If cancelled during the training, you will be refunded 15% of the registration fee for each *full* week remaining of the first 5 training weeks of the program. For example, if you decide to cancel on August 6th, which is during week 3, you will be refunded 30% of your original registration fee. Please make the request by 5 pm Pacific time on the Friday before a training week to be eligible for the refund.
When week 5 begins, on August 18th, no refunds will be available.
Register here!
Please add one employee at a time into your cart. This will allow you to fill out a registration form for each employee.
If purchasing before July 1st, 10% discount will be applied at check out.
Any questions or comments? Inquiries or curiosities? Fill out the form below and I’ll get back to you within a couple of business days.