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What role does finance play when an organization’s mission is to end hunger around the world? Join Bob Bloom, CFO at Heifer International, as he reveals his CFO mind-set and explains the complexities behind driving performance inside a not-for-profit with plus-sized ambition.
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Driving Change: The Ah-Hah Moment
“What we’re trying to do is work to decrease the level of expenses associated with the fundraising, level of expenses associated with the management in general so that we could push as much as we can to the programmatic and actually fulfill our mission.”
CFOTL: So, how does a not for profit like Heifer, how do you benchmark yourselves? How do you know this organization is performing in a way you want it to?
BLOOM: Yeah, that’s a great question. So, one of the key metrics in the industry, the non-profit sector is functional allocation. So, it’s a percentage of your expenses devoted to three activities, programmatic activity, fundraising activity and management in general. So, what I’m trying to do is work to decrease the level of expenses associated with the fundraising, level of expenses associated with the management in general so that we could push as much as we can to the programmatic and actually fulfill our mission. So, that’s one simple metric, but increasingly, our work is becoming more outcome-based, and so we are very focused on, so how do we measure our improvement?
Interview Links:
Bob’s site
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