501 Companion Podcast

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Accounting for Non-Profits with Steve Doud of Jitasa Group   

 

Episode 6 — Recorded Jun 17, 2022

The 501Companion podcast speaks with Steve Doud of the Jitasa Group (https://www.jitasagroup.com/) in Boise, ID whose mission is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of nonprofit organizations. Steve is the Vice President of Sales and he is responsible for executing the strategic marketing plan in developing sales of BPO and ERP solutions for bookkeeping, accounting and financial services in the nonprofit sector.

Transcript

Welcome to the 501 companion podcast. This is an educational and news podcast slash podcast for 501 c 3 charitable organizations that want to create better content, optimize their technology and improve their marketing to better serve their mission. This is episode 29 we are just starting our summer shows. My name is Buddy Scalera. I'm the chief content officer and the host of the 501 Companion Podcast. My career is focused on digital marketing, social, emerging technologies and I'm also a professional writer, working and teaching the craft and business of making comics and I am joined by none other than Sandy Miniutti, the chief operating officer at Family Promise. Sandy is a versatile nonprofit executive with 20 plus years of extensive experience in public relations, marketing, fundraising, and strategic planning. She's committed to advancing a vibrant and healthy philanthropic marketplace in which charities have the necessary skills and resources to solve our community's most pressing issues. And today we have a very special guest. We're being joined by Steve Doud of the Jittis Group.

I may get that wrong, Steve, you may have correct me on that, out of Boise Idaho, whose mission is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of nonprofit organizations. And Steve's the Vice President of Sales and he's responsible for executing the strategic marketing plan in developing sands, sales of B.P.O. And E.R.P. Solutions for bookkeeping, accounting and financial services in the nonprofit sector will get into all of that. Please welcome Sandy and Steve.

Thanks Buddy. I will correct It's it's Ji-Tas-uh, Jitasa Group, but Jittis is one of the better things we've been called. So, so I'll take that, we'll go with that. But now it is, Jitasa has a meaning. I remember looking it up on your website. What's the meaning of it? Does, it does, it's actually a Thai word that loosely translates as the spirit of serving others. And as we exclusively support the nonprofit sector, we thought that was kind of a cool way to tie what we do to or the purpose of what we do to the clients we serve.

So yeah, I love it. And that's great. And Sandy welcome back. It's been a it's been a bit since we've been on camera together, but I'm excited. And thanks for bringing Steve to the show.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of Steven. I'm excited that we can have this conversation today. And I remember you saying that you were excited because Steve number one has been at Jitasa. Did I get it right? Perfect for over 10 years. But he's also a colleague of yours. You you you've collaborated over time. Talk about your relationship with Steve. Yeah. So like most scrappy nonprofits. When I was a Charity Navigator. I found myself as CFO and Vice President Marketing, which is crazy. Um, and I was literally pulling all nighters to get financial reports done and I got an ad through the Independent Sector, which is a trade group for nonprofits about Tasa and we've been looking around locally for bookkeeper or CFO or somebody part time and it was just so expensive to get that kind of local talent. Um and Jitasa was this beautiful solution where they could do everything soup to nuts in the finance area for a nonprofit. Um It was really novel at the time to outsource your work to another state. They could pay your bills. This was like mind blowing that we could do all this remotely. Um But for me, they gave me the peace of mind at night to know that somebody with nonprofit accounting expertise was managing my books. I'm not a C.P.A. I got my Mster's Degree in finance, but like I'm not a professional in that area. Um So I could really rest assure that they knew what all the current regulations and guidelines were around nonprofit finances, and that they could then provide me a report. They would do all the things and provide me the report. So I could have the interesting conversation with the board about how we were managing cash flow or where we could invest in new programs or where our revenue was coming in. Um And it's just been great. And so when I came to Family Promise, I brought Steven/Jitasa along um so that they can help mitigate that risk for my affiliates um and help them concentrate on what we do best, right. People in the nonprofit sector are really focused on programs and not always on the HR, Administrative, Finance side

You know, Steve that's that is a heck of a lead in and it does, you know, I can't beat that. I've got nothing else to say, Buddy, really have been a great solution for Thank you. Sandy, Sandy always has been a great supporter of ours and so I appreciate the kind words.

Sandy, so, you know, obviously, you know, you are a specialized service in a very deep vertical um talking about, you know, sort of taking the hand off from Sandy, what does Jitasa do and what are your specializations and why is it so important that you only serve charitable organizations?

Yeah, it's an interesting question and I suppose it deserves a little bit of background in terms of how we even came to be as an organization ourselves. So our CEO and Founder gentleman named Jeff. Jeff Russell had the vision for this business and some background on Jeff. He in a prior life he was with Accenture for a big part of his career. And in that role he was working with Large Fortune one hundred's, helping them outsource different elements of their operations to drive efficiencies and optimization. And in his spare time he did a lot of work in the nonprofit world. He and his wife started at 501 C three. He served on a number of boards and he saw this need in the nonprofit world for back office support functions around primarily around bookkeeping and accounting, because because most folks as Sandy was kind of mentioning, most folks go into a career or a non profit line of work because they have some vision or some passion or mission to make the world a better place somehow. Uh and and usually that's not by doing bookkeeping and accounting. So, so Jeff had this idea. And so he, he left Accenture, he went to business school at Yale with the whole objective of putting together the business model that would ultimately become Jitasa and came out and launched the business in here in Boise Idaho again, where we're located back in 2008 and we've grown grown quite a bit since then. We can talk more about that. But, but Jeff's vision and our whole purpose is to help our clients um drive their, their, their mission or their programs or their ministry, whatever. Maybe we have clients in all walks of the nonprofit world, help them do that better. And, and Sandy, I think you you reference something, you know, doing what you do best. That's kind of our mantra do what you do best. Um We don't know anything about running these operations and organizations that we serve, but we know a lot about non profit bookkeeping and accounting and financial management and so are kind of our message to our clients is, hey, you focus on what you do best. Your mission will focus on what we do best keeping your book straight and timely and accurate and together that, that partnership will grow. And so it's to take that off the client's plate so they can, they can do just that.

You know, Sandy, It sort of takes me back to a converse-a side conversation that we had, you know, you have many responsibilities. People, you serve to the board to your contributors. Why is it so important, uh, for you to have, I feel like it's a softball, but why is this so important to have these books straight. Um, and particularly by a team that focuses only on charitable organizations. I mean, obviously nonprofits have an obligation to their donors that they're protecting the investment that they've made and they're doing a good job stewarding that money to bring about the change in the world that we're all here to do. Um, so there's that piece and also from an operational standpoint, we can't do those things if we don't, if we're not monitoring our cash flow. I mean that's a huge problem right now with many nonprofits that got big infusions of government money during covid, is that oftentimes those grants come, you do the work, you spend the money and then the government will reimburse you at some point down the line, usually months later than they promised. Um, so having somebody like to help nonprofits guide them through that and that cash cash flow management is critically important. So you know, there's the obligation to the public and to the donors, but just operationally like any small business or large business. I mean, Steve has huge clients, Big Boy Scout councils and others, um, not just small midsize nonprofits. You know, they have to have a solid handle on their finances in order to be able to serve more people and and do more things. Yeah. If I can add to that buddy and you touched on some of the key elements saying there in, in helping the clients, our clients, um, be better stewards of the funding that they're receiving from their donors, right? And whether that's uh, an individual, private donor or a foundation or the government, that's, that's granting money, they have an obligation to be resourceful and and diligent with the use of that money, but it also goes to the there and deliverable is the program that they're delivering and serving. And in an anecdote I can share that we always kind of loved to tell. This is a number of years ago we had a a battered women's shelter come to us and they said we need help because our financials are not in good shape and we got turned down for a grant because our financials were not um, clean and accurate. And so we took them out as a client and we cleaned things up. We did a lot of work with them over the course of the next year. They applied for that same grant the following year and we were awarded that grant and they came back to us and said because of what you digitize and because of what you helped us do. There are X. I can't remember. The number was 50 60 more women will have a place to come to for for shelter when they're dealing with their domestic situation, whatever it may be. And it was kind of like, wow, that's, that's pretty cool. That's what we get deep into the debits and credits and, and you know, accuracy and timeliness, blah blah blah. Which is why we do what we do. But the real reason we do what we do is so our clients can do those things and deliver on their mission. And that was, that was just a great story to hear from this, this particular client and we had lots of other stories like that. But that one was the one that was really, really meaningful for us.

You know, Sandy, you you, you lead a um, Gosh, a large organization with an an incredible number of um of nuances and things are moving in different locations all at once. And you've talked to me about the challenges of, of governing all of that. Now we should say this isn't like a paid promotion. This isn't like, you know, like we're just here and we and nothing of that nature. But like talk to me about your journey, Sandy. Uh, and realizing where, where you needed help and what, what it means to sometimes let go of a part of what you do. I mean, you, you said you have a degree in this and yet you have to let this go. Was that difficult for you? Was it a relief?

I mean that's a good point. That's another thing that many my affiliates are struggling with right now as they scale up because many of them have during Covid, um, you go from being the person that does all the things to like having to let go of pieces of it to other people and whether that's outsourced or internal and that's really hard to give up that control. Um, I think when we gave up the financial portion portion to Jitasa, and Steve can talk about this, we did a lot of vetting our board was extremely involved. Um, it was really critical when I was at Charity Navigator here, we are reading other nonprofits finances. We better have ours and like tiptop shape. Right? So, um, at the end of the day, it was, it was a great choice to let it go because it really freed up my time to do the more interesting work and um, being strategic about our finances and our operations and not having to do all the, you know, pay this bill that's due tomorrow and all that kind of work that has to get done, which is good to know how that all functions so that you can function at a higher level. But yeah, I think it's always a challenge when you have to give away a piece of your job and lose that control to somebody else. But especially with finances, I mean, it's just a huge risk mitigation to have it outsourced. Um there's a lot of moving parts, right? We have treasures that come and go on the board staff that come and go. A lot of my affiliates in particular small operations. And it's hard to have the necessary checks and balances to make sure different people are participating in the financial process in different ways. So it's great that when you hire somebody outsource they can take care of all that for you. And you know, that that risk is being mitigated

If I can, if I can chime in again, Sandy says these great things, it makes me think of thoughts. All those things are absolutely right. But the other thing that I always stress this in my conversations with with prospective clients is that, that are coming on board, we're gonna take great care of your, your books and make sure your financials are accurate timely. But that does not relieve you from your responsibility to still be a financial manager. Our role is to make you a better financial manager. So it's still, it's so critical that the client plays that role. So, but it's yours that, yeah, we're taking some of those functions away. Maybe the day to day monthly activities of managing the general ledger. We're taking that off the client's plate. But, hopefully freeing up some time so that the client can now take the data that we're providing them and be that financial management, they need to be in their in their nonprofit um because they still still have that responsibility and so we want to make-in fact, some of our clients have told us, they say, you know, I actually spend more time in my financials now than I did before I was with Jitasa and that's a good thing and I'm more aware of what's going on now and I have a better idea and when I sit down with my board, I can have a more more productive and strategic conversation because I'm more aware of what's going on now with my financial. So so that's an important part that that it takes some things away but also keeps the client heavily involved in their their financial management.

That's really interesting. Now Sandy often you'll lead the conversation since you know our guests, about their secret origin and how they got here. You wanna you wanna take over on this?

Well, I was gonna this is a secret conversation I guess maybe um we were talking in our last vlog cast about taking breaks and sabbaticals, and Steve is actually doing that. That's a policy at his organization. Maybe Steve wants to share a little bit about that.

I'll talk more time about a sabbatical and I will about accounting any day now, you know, um, it is one of the blessings of our our businesses that employees are granted uh every five years granted a sabbatical. And and that was part of Jeff's vision as well in building this business. He he wanted his, he knew his his staff was gonna be working hard and be committed, and dedicated and so forth. And he wanted in addition to normal P. T. O. You have each year to everyone to be able to take a six week break every five years and really disconnect cause you know, we all take vacations, but we don't always really disconnect if you're gone for a week, you know, you can put things on hold and come back to it. Um and uh you know, and um or kind of stay on top of email while you're on vacation. But when you're away for six weeks, you have to let it go because you can't be there. And so that and again, that's one of our our um one of Jeff's objectives is to have us disconnect, recharge and come back energized. And so it's it's a blessing and and I am happy I'm coming up on my 10 year anniversary. So I'm getting ready for my my second sabbatical coming up. So it's it's um it's a it's a wonderful benefit. And and again it, but it speaks to not to get off on another tangent, but it speaks to the need for all of us to kind of disconnect every now and then and and step away and uh, and come back better charged and energized about what we're doing.

I mean, we're definitely dealing with the great resignation right now. I'm seeing that across my affiliates, the work that nonprofits do is hard. Um, and people are really burnt out post covid just continue to put the fires out and now that covid settling down, all the fires that were there before are coming up. Um, so I think having us a bath will policy across the board is the way to go. It's definitely critical to give people that time. Like you said to really decompress, really get away, really change their mindset. See something new and then come back refreshed with new ideas. I think it's critical.

Yeah. And it, and you no longer, uh, sabbatical, like the one you just talked about Steve encourages you to do more than a staycation. Right? Like you have a couple of days, maybe you can do an overnight or maybe you can do a week. I don't know, we go down the shore. I don't know what you do in Idaho. I was down the shore. Yeah, actually it was, so you know, then you think about that, the fact that you can actually really travel. I would imagine helps you to reset and then really see the world that you're trying to serve. Uh my, am I on track with that Steve was the first sabbatical uh, remind you of your mission?

Yeah. If I was a better man, I'd say yes. But to be honest, uh, we, so my first sabbatical, um, my wife and I traveled, we spent three weeks traveling between Cape Cod and, and Maine up the new England Coast, which we've never seen before. And um, and then we took three weeks and hopped over to Ireland and traveled throughout Ireland for three weeks. Um, but, but it's kind of interesting you ask that because it did, we went to places we've never been before, right? And and saw things and met people and experienced food and culture that we've never never had before and otherwise wouldn't have had the opportunity to do so when you're, when you're like really immersed in it as we did. And um, and, and it it does, it gives you an appreciation for the world, right? Seeing things that the otherwise hadn't seen before and the serendipity of discovering things that you didn't anticipate and you come back with that and and realize, you know, maybe I wasn't thinking directly of our business or the clients, but I came back with this, this energy, that, wow, that was, that was really cool. And it makes me want to go out again and experience more and, and share more and so forth. And we'll be doing that again. We take our trip this this year. So, um, so yeah, I wouldn't say directly thinking about the mission, but, but indirectly it comes back, that's part of that energy that you come back after stepping away and, and disconnecting for a while and getting to experience things.

I think too, as hard as it is for a leader to step away. Um, it's important to do that for the betterment of the organization. One of the things I learned when I took over the finances initially is like you need to be off for two weeks in a row because that gives enough time. Kind of a cycle through some of the financial operations to catch any problems like if I was moving money to an account in the Cayman islands, right. That should come up in those two weeks I'm gone. So having a director away, there's that risk management, but also it teaches the organization how to survive when that director does move on. You know, make sure that you have all the policies and procedures in place. People know how to find passcodes. People know how to deal with different crisis. People know how to talk to the board or to donors. Um, so I think it's, it's really, really hard to step away as a leader. But I think it's, I think it's important for the growth of the organization to practice that from time to time.

It's interesting you mention that, Sandy, because, uh, I mentioned Jeff Russell our our founder and CEO, he instituted this, this program in this policy, but he had never taken his own sabbatical. And, and, uh, and I think it was, I don't know if it was eight years into the business, Nine years in our, our board of directors said, you know, Jeff, you need to take this for a couple of reasons. Number one, you need to step away and recharge. You need to show this example to your staff that it's okay to do this, um, as the, as the, the ultimate leader, as the CEO, um, and, and you need to demonstrate to the business that they can make decisions and run the business without you at the helm. And so Jeff said, well, okay, board, if you're telling me, so, he, he took a great sabbatical himself and checked all those boxes. Um, you know, we, we figured out how to do things with without Jeff, he empowered us to make decisions. Um, and uh, and he showed all of us that, hey, this is, this is something that we all can do and should do. Uh, so yeah, I think the li it's, there's lots of different ways we, as leaders need to show, set examples for the people were, were leading, that's, that's one way of doing so.

Yeah, and you guys have gotten really remote now too, right have, um, like, like most everyone, we, uh, we're based in Boise. Historically, we've always had our, our headquarters and main service center here in Boise. We have three other global offices in Europe, Asia, and Central America, but our US operations were based in Boise um on March 13th 2020 when the whole world turned upside down, we all packed up things, went home and and set up a shop at home and um, with, with intent that, you know, we'll be back in a few months, I think everybody thought that and it didn't happen. And, and as we kind of went through things we realized and the leadership team realized, you know what, we're, we haven't lost clients because of this, we haven't lost staff because of this. We haven't lost any productivity because of this. And oh, by the way, we can greatly reduce some of our operating costs. And so yeah, we've gone to this, uh, this remote model and, and, and it's opened up the, instead of hiring only in Boise or recruiting folks and saying, hey, you gotta move to Boise Idaho, which not everybody may want to do. Um, it's allowed us to, to recruit talent and candidates across the country that we otherwise wouldn't have had access to. So it's, it's been a very, very good thing for our business.

Yeah, we've, we've gone pretty remote as well. I think the challenge has been for the newer staff to kind of build trust and relationships over Zoom. Um, this past week we had an on site retreat and brought everybody in and um, I can already see the difference. Um, you know, we would have done that earlier, but there was all the, you know, variants of Covid, it was hard to get people together still, but I think moving forward, we're gonna be pretty intentional about having regular meetups with everybody just just to have fun. Even doesn't even have to be a work meeting. Um, but I think that's, that's gonna be a big challenge for a lot of non profits moving forward. I think they're gonna have to continue to offer that remote possibility. Like you said, there's upside, you can get talent from anywhere maybe that you didn't have access to before. And we've definitely seen, we've seen affiliates triple their budget, triple the number of people they've served. Our offices tripled. So there's, I think we've still been really successful, but there's, it's not 100% right. Like you still have to put some intention among building those relationships, totally agree.

That's a good one Steve as we, as we sort of come toward the runway of, of of our time together. Um, I was wondering, you know, it sounds great that you can go to an organization like yours for these kinds of services. Um, what kinds of organizations are best served by a company like Jiatsu, and what are not, what ones are not? Now Buddy, you said Jiatsu that time, So Jitasa [laughing] this is gonna be fun. I'll take a shot at you each time. No, it's it's again it's been butchered far worse than that. Yeah, that's that's uh that's funny. So you know, it's it's interesting. We um we've got over 1,000 nonprofit clients across the country um across I think 48 different states um in in in clients in all walks of the nonprofit world, as I mentioned in organizations that range in size from small startups that just got their initial funding and need help getting their feet on the ground and and a foundation put in place to to these large sandy mentioned, you know, National Federations, multi $100 million nonprofits. Um and and in all of them are of course you're talking to the guy who's the sales guy, right. So I think we're the best solution for every non profit out there, but there's there's different reasons why we're a good fit in some of the rural parts of the country for example. Um And we have clients in in very, very small markets where they may not have the pool of candidates with the skill set to do nonprofit accounting, which is very unique in itself. They may not have the pool of candidates. And so in that case the need that were satisfying and whether they're a small nonprofit or larger nonprofit, the need were satisfying. There is is just access to skill set and and talent. Um so so that's a dynamic there now in some of the larger markets, um, New York, DC, San Francisco, those are some of our our three largest markets. We have a lot of clients there, there needs a little bit different, they have lots of access to two skill set and talent, but the cost of the skill set in those markets maybe quite a bit more. And so the fact that we're in Boise Idaho, and with offices in in Costa Rica and Sarajevo, and and Bangkok, the were able to balance out the cost for our skills and the staff that we bring to the table uh in a much more cost effective manner than you would pay for those same skill sets in those, those major markets. So that's, that's more of a, in some cases a business discussion around budget management because they got access to the talent. They just, from a cost effective standpoint, they may be able to do it more um from a cost management standpoint, be able to do so more cost effectively by outsourcing to a firm like Jitasa. So again, it's just different reasons and in different needs because those larger nonprofits, they're, they're big enough they could staff an entire department in many cases. Um, but they would spend a lot more money doing so considering salaries, benefits, payroll taxes, the time involved in recruiting and hiring and training and managing and hopefully retaining uh that staff. Um the business case is completely different when you, when you look at an outsource model. So there's a couple of, I'm not sure if that made sense, but it was a couple of different thoughts about why a non profit and what types of non profits we may be a good fit for. There's different reasons based on the where the nonprofit is and the life of the nonprofit and size and complexity and so forth.

That's really helpful. Sandy any any final thoughts on this uh, before we start to move into the last couple questions. Yeah, I mean, I think another reason, um, and this was kind of part of your answer that a nonprofit would hire Jitasa the redundancy, right? I have an affiliate that their CFO quit unexpectedly and they don't have the skills in the backup. They can do some basic things, but they're in a panic. They need somebody pretty quickly. So if your account manager leaves at Jitasa, no worries, somebody else is gonna pick up that work tomorrow. So there's a consistency in knowing that you always have your back covered. And I think all this really just goes back to nonprofits knowing like what is it that we exist to do and where can we outsource work so that we can concentrate on our core mission and things like HR, Admin, Finances. I think those are great things to outsource to the professionals, experts. Who're doing it all day every day and, and then you, you can rest at night and really concentrate on your programs and I think um to your point that can be hard sometimes for non profits to relinquish that and for boards to understand that. Um but it can really free up a lot of resources in the end for the nonprofit to be more focused on serving people or cleaning up the environment or whatever their core mission is.

Now, that's a great point. And and you know, I have worked in the pharmaceutical industry for years and years and Steve, I worked at an agency that did not take on work that was outside of prescriptions. And the reason for that is we said, look, we don't do anything but this, but we do this all the time every day. And that was the value prop, which was to say there was, there was nothing else on our plate except for our clients in the prescription space. So I I understand that value prop and I think it's a great one.

So Sandy usually get the last question and before I do a read of the final part of any final thoughts that you want to throw to. You're gonna give me a trick question, your hard won on give us a story about an interesting client,

Wow. Well, well I've got this, this one client group that um that does this tremendous work to, to help families avoid homelessness. You know what that. So as you can imagine and Family Promise is a wonderful organization, wonderful client of ours. But we've got clients in all walks of the nonprofit world. The, and I'm gonna probably butcher this name, but we have the American Coleopterists Society. I hope they're not listening right now. But I want to say American Coleopterists Society that they're an organization somewhere in the midwest, I think in Minnesota and they're all about the study of the benefit of beetles. And so, which is again, I think it's called tree probably butchering that they're all about beetles and they're totally in the beetles. And, and, and they established a five oh one C three and they raise money so they can further research into the beetles. It's pretty interesting line of work. And again, we have clients doing all kinds of great things and that's, that's a pretty unique area of pursuit. That is probably the most unique, um, ever heard of, right? Sandy. Yeah. I mean, it just goes to show you right, there's over a million nonprofits in America. There really are. There's so much diversity. So that's cool.

That is, and so Steve traditionally when we close out, we try to find out where people can find both your organization and the best place to get in touch with you. So where can they find the organization? Great. So our website is always the best place, right? Um, our website or URL is www.JITASAGROUP.com as J I T A S A Group dot com. And on that website is information about our services, Our organization. Uh, there's a request to quote button if the client wants or proceeding the organization, the Freudian. I, I think them all as clients, but if the organization wants to learn more and get a price quote, they can contact us through a request to quote. But that's probably the easiest way because we have a sales team that specializes in certain segments of the nonprofit market and depending on the size of the organization, they'll get routed to the most appropriate person to speak with him. But again, it looks like you're on linkedin or is that the best place to reach out if they wanted to find out more about you and me personally? Yeah, linkedin. They can find me on linkedin. There's a lot more exciting things to look out in the world than me though, I'll tell you. But no, if, if anyone wants to reach me LinkedIn of course they can find me Steve Doud D O U D and I'd be happy to talk with anyone anytime. That sounds great.

And Sandy, where can they find you? I know you are getting more active on social than ever. Um, where can they find uh, family promise And where can they follow you? So Family Promise. That's Family Promise dot org. And there's a link there to all of our affiliates if you want to get in contact with a local affiliate. Um, good place to find me is on twitter at Sandra Miniutti and I'm also on LinkedIn at Sandra Miniutti and you're doing a heck of a job on social, you're sharing all the different things that only promises doing and people should be hitting that like button for you. Thank you.

Yeah, so my name is Buddy Scalera and you can find me in all places at Buddy Scalera, be a twitter, Linkedin, or my personal website and you can find us at the five oh one C three Look up dot org website. We hope you enjoyed the 501 companion podcast and consider subscribing so that you never miss an episode. Do you have any questions, show ideas where you're part of a charitable organization that wants to be on the show, visit the Five oh one C three look up dot org website and find our contact information, a complete list of of our previous episodes with me and Sandy and of course the extensive free resources of the Five oh one C three Look up website.

Thank you for joining us on the 501 companion podcast. We hope you join us again next week for the information and inspiration to take your charitable mission to the next level done.


Episode 6 — Recorded Jun 17, 2022

The 501Companion podcast speaks with Steve Doud of the Jitasa Group (https://www.jitasagroup.com/) in Boise, ID whose mission is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of nonprofit organizations. Steve is the Vice President of Sales and he is responsible for executing the strategic marketing plan in developing sales of BPO and ERP solutions for bookkeeping, accounting and financial services in the nonprofit sector.

Transcript

Welcome to the 501 companion podcast. This is an educational and news podcast slash podcast for 501 c 3 charitable organizations that want to create better content, optimize their technology and improve their marketing to better serve their mission. This is episode 29 we are just starting our summer shows. My name is Buddy Scalera. I'm the chief content officer and the host of the 501 Companion Podcast. My career is focused on digital marketing, social, emerging technologies and I'm also a professional writer, working and teaching the craft and business of making comics and I am joined by none other than Sandy Miniutti, the chief operating officer at Family Promise. Sandy is a versatile nonprofit executive with 20 plus years of extensive experience in public relations, marketing, fundraising, and strategic planning. She's committed to advancing a vibrant and healthy philanthropic marketplace in which charities have the necessary skills and resources to solve our community's most pressing issues. And today we have a very special guest. We're being joined by Steve Doud of the Jittis Group.

I may get that wrong, Steve, you may have correct me on that, out of Boise Idaho, whose mission is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of nonprofit organizations. And Steve's the Vice President of Sales and he's responsible for executing the strategic marketing plan in developing sands, sales of B.P.O. And E.R.P. Solutions for bookkeeping, accounting and financial services in the nonprofit sector will get into all of that. Please welcome Sandy and Steve.

Thanks Buddy. I will correct It's it's Ji-Tas-uh, Jitasa Group, but Jittis is one of the better things we've been called. So, so I'll take that, we'll go with that. But now it is, Jitasa has a meaning. I remember looking it up on your website. What's the meaning of it? Does, it does, it's actually a Thai word that loosely translates as the spirit of serving others. And as we exclusively support the nonprofit sector, we thought that was kind of a cool way to tie what we do to or the purpose of what we do to the clients we serve.

So yeah, I love it. And that's great. And Sandy welcome back. It's been a it's been a bit since we've been on camera together, but I'm excited. And thanks for bringing Steve to the show.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of Steven. I'm excited that we can have this conversation today. And I remember you saying that you were excited because Steve number one has been at Jitasa. Did I get it right? Perfect for over 10 years. But he's also a colleague of yours. You you you've collaborated over time. Talk about your relationship with Steve. Yeah. So like most scrappy nonprofits. When I was a Charity Navigator. I found myself as CFO and Vice President Marketing, which is crazy. Um, and I was literally pulling all nighters to get financial reports done and I got an ad through the Independent Sector, which is a trade group for nonprofits about Tasa and we've been looking around locally for bookkeeper or CFO or somebody part time and it was just so expensive to get that kind of local talent. Um and Jitasa was this beautiful solution where they could do everything soup to nuts in the finance area for a nonprofit. Um It was really novel at the time to outsource your work to another state. They could pay your bills. This was like mind blowing that we could do all this remotely. Um But for me, they gave me the peace of mind at night to know that somebody with nonprofit accounting expertise was managing my books. I'm not a C.P.A. I got my Mster's Degree in finance, but like I'm not a professional in that area. Um So I could really rest assure that they knew what all the current regulations and guidelines were around nonprofit finances, and that they could then provide me a report. They would do all the things and provide me the report. So I could have the interesting conversation with the board about how we were managing cash flow or where we could invest in new programs or where our revenue was coming in. Um And it's just been great. And so when I came to Family Promise, I brought Steven/Jitasa along um so that they can help mitigate that risk for my affiliates um and help them concentrate on what we do best, right. People in the nonprofit sector are really focused on programs and not always on the HR, Administrative, Finance side

You know, Steve that's that is a heck of a lead in and it does, you know, I can't beat that. I've got nothing else to say, Buddy, really have been a great solution for Thank you. Sandy, Sandy always has been a great supporter of ours and so I appreciate the kind words.

Sandy, so, you know, obviously, you know, you are a specialized service in a very deep vertical um talking about, you know, sort of taking the hand off from Sandy, what does Jitasa do and what are your specializations and why is it so important that you only serve charitable organizations?

Yeah, it's an interesting question and I suppose it deserves a little bit of background in terms of how we even came to be as an organization ourselves. So our CEO and Founder gentleman named Jeff. Jeff Russell had the vision for this business and some background on Jeff. He in a prior life he was with Accenture for a big part of his career. And in that role he was working with Large Fortune one hundred's, helping them outsource different elements of their operations to drive efficiencies and optimization. And in his spare time he did a lot of work in the nonprofit world. He and his wife started at 501 C three. He served on a number of boards and he saw this need in the nonprofit world for back office support functions around primarily around bookkeeping and accounting, because because most folks as Sandy was kind of mentioning, most folks go into a career or a non profit line of work because they have some vision or some passion or mission to make the world a better place somehow. Uh and and usually that's not by doing bookkeeping and accounting. So, so Jeff had this idea. And so he, he left Accenture, he went to business school at Yale with the whole objective of putting together the business model that would ultimately become Jitasa and came out and launched the business in here in Boise Idaho again, where we're located back in 2008 and we've grown grown quite a bit since then. We can talk more about that. But, but Jeff's vision and our whole purpose is to help our clients um drive their, their, their mission or their programs or their ministry, whatever. Maybe we have clients in all walks of the nonprofit world, help them do that better. And, and Sandy, I think you you reference something, you know, doing what you do best. That's kind of our mantra do what you do best. Um We don't know anything about running these operations and organizations that we serve, but we know a lot about non profit bookkeeping and accounting and financial management and so are kind of our message to our clients is, hey, you focus on what you do best. Your mission will focus on what we do best keeping your book straight and timely and accurate and together that, that partnership will grow. And so it's to take that off the client's plate so they can, they can do just that.

You know, Sandy, It sort of takes me back to a converse-a side conversation that we had, you know, you have many responsibilities. People, you serve to the board to your contributors. Why is it so important, uh, for you to have, I feel like it's a softball, but why is this so important to have these books straight. Um, and particularly by a team that focuses only on charitable organizations. I mean, obviously nonprofits have an obligation to their donors that they're protecting the investment that they've made and they're doing a good job stewarding that money to bring about the change in the world that we're all here to do. Um, so there's that piece and also from an operational standpoint, we can't do those things if we don't, if we're not monitoring our cash flow. I mean that's a huge problem right now with many nonprofits that got big infusions of government money during covid, is that oftentimes those grants come, you do the work, you spend the money and then the government will reimburse you at some point down the line, usually months later than they promised. Um, so having somebody like to help nonprofits guide them through that and that cash cash flow management is critically important. So you know, there's the obligation to the public and to the donors, but just operationally like any small business or large business. I mean, Steve has huge clients, Big Boy Scout councils and others, um, not just small midsize nonprofits. You know, they have to have a solid handle on their finances in order to be able to serve more people and and do more things. Yeah. If I can add to that buddy and you touched on some of the key elements saying there in, in helping the clients, our clients, um, be better stewards of the funding that they're receiving from their donors, right? And whether that's uh, an individual, private donor or a foundation or the government, that's, that's granting money, they have an obligation to be resourceful and and diligent with the use of that money, but it also goes to the there and deliverable is the program that they're delivering and serving. And in an anecdote I can share that we always kind of loved to tell. This is a number of years ago we had a a battered women's shelter come to us and they said we need help because our financials are not in good shape and we got turned down for a grant because our financials were not um, clean and accurate. And so we took them out as a client and we cleaned things up. We did a lot of work with them over the course of the next year. They applied for that same grant the following year and we were awarded that grant and they came back to us and said because of what you digitize and because of what you helped us do. There are X. I can't remember. The number was 50 60 more women will have a place to come to for for shelter when they're dealing with their domestic situation, whatever it may be. And it was kind of like, wow, that's, that's pretty cool. That's what we get deep into the debits and credits and, and you know, accuracy and timeliness, blah blah blah. Which is why we do what we do. But the real reason we do what we do is so our clients can do those things and deliver on their mission. And that was, that was just a great story to hear from this, this particular client and we had lots of other stories like that. But that one was the one that was really, really meaningful for us.

You know, Sandy, you you, you lead a um, Gosh, a large organization with an an incredible number of um of nuances and things are moving in different locations all at once. And you've talked to me about the challenges of, of governing all of that. Now we should say this isn't like a paid promotion. This isn't like, you know, like we're just here and we and nothing of that nature. But like talk to me about your journey, Sandy. Uh, and realizing where, where you needed help and what, what it means to sometimes let go of a part of what you do. I mean, you, you said you have a degree in this and yet you have to let this go. Was that difficult for you? Was it a relief?

I mean that's a good point. That's another thing that many my affiliates are struggling with right now as they scale up because many of them have during Covid, um, you go from being the person that does all the things to like having to let go of pieces of it to other people and whether that's outsourced or internal and that's really hard to give up that control. Um, I think when we gave up the financial portion portion to Jitasa, and Steve can talk about this, we did a lot of vetting our board was extremely involved. Um, it was really critical when I was at Charity Navigator here, we are reading other nonprofits finances. We better have ours and like tiptop shape. Right? So, um, at the end of the day, it was, it was a great choice to let it go because it really freed up my time to do the more interesting work and um, being strategic about our finances and our operations and not having to do all the, you know, pay this bill that's due tomorrow and all that kind of work that has to get done, which is good to know how that all functions so that you can function at a higher level. But yeah, I think it's always a challenge when you have to give away a piece of your job and lose that control to somebody else. But especially with finances, I mean, it's just a huge risk mitigation to have it outsourced. Um there's a lot of moving parts, right? We have treasures that come and go on the board staff that come and go. A lot of my affiliates in particular small operations. And it's hard to have the necessary checks and balances to make sure different people are participating in the financial process in different ways. So it's great that when you hire somebody outsource they can take care of all that for you. And you know, that that risk is being mitigated

If I can, if I can chime in again, Sandy says these great things, it makes me think of thoughts. All those things are absolutely right. But the other thing that I always stress this in my conversations with with prospective clients is that, that are coming on board, we're gonna take great care of your, your books and make sure your financials are accurate timely. But that does not relieve you from your responsibility to still be a financial manager. Our role is to make you a better financial manager. So it's still, it's so critical that the client plays that role. So, but it's yours that, yeah, we're taking some of those functions away. Maybe the day to day monthly activities of managing the general ledger. We're taking that off the client's plate. But, hopefully freeing up some time so that the client can now take the data that we're providing them and be that financial management, they need to be in their in their nonprofit um because they still still have that responsibility and so we want to make-in fact, some of our clients have told us, they say, you know, I actually spend more time in my financials now than I did before I was with Jitasa and that's a good thing and I'm more aware of what's going on now and I have a better idea and when I sit down with my board, I can have a more more productive and strategic conversation because I'm more aware of what's going on now with my financial. So so that's an important part that that it takes some things away but also keeps the client heavily involved in their their financial management.

That's really interesting. Now Sandy often you'll lead the conversation since you know our guests, about their secret origin and how they got here. You wanna you wanna take over on this?

Well, I was gonna this is a secret conversation I guess maybe um we were talking in our last vlog cast about taking breaks and sabbaticals, and Steve is actually doing that. That's a policy at his organization. Maybe Steve wants to share a little bit about that.

I'll talk more time about a sabbatical and I will about accounting any day now, you know, um, it is one of the blessings of our our businesses that employees are granted uh every five years granted a sabbatical. And and that was part of Jeff's vision as well in building this business. He he wanted his, he knew his his staff was gonna be working hard and be committed, and dedicated and so forth. And he wanted in addition to normal P. T. O. You have each year to everyone to be able to take a six week break every five years and really disconnect cause you know, we all take vacations, but we don't always really disconnect if you're gone for a week, you know, you can put things on hold and come back to it. Um and uh you know, and um or kind of stay on top of email while you're on vacation. But when you're away for six weeks, you have to let it go because you can't be there. And so that and again, that's one of our our um one of Jeff's objectives is to have us disconnect, recharge and come back energized. And so it's it's a blessing and and I am happy I'm coming up on my 10 year anniversary. So I'm getting ready for my my second sabbatical coming up. So it's it's um it's a it's a wonderful benefit. And and again it, but it speaks to not to get off on another tangent, but it speaks to the need for all of us to kind of disconnect every now and then and and step away and uh, and come back better charged and energized about what we're doing.

I mean, we're definitely dealing with the great resignation right now. I'm seeing that across my affiliates, the work that nonprofits do is hard. Um, and people are really burnt out post covid just continue to put the fires out and now that covid settling down, all the fires that were there before are coming up. Um, so I think having us a bath will policy across the board is the way to go. It's definitely critical to give people that time. Like you said to really decompress, really get away, really change their mindset. See something new and then come back refreshed with new ideas. I think it's critical.

Yeah. And it, and you no longer, uh, sabbatical, like the one you just talked about Steve encourages you to do more than a staycation. Right? Like you have a couple of days, maybe you can do an overnight or maybe you can do a week. I don't know, we go down the shore. I don't know what you do in Idaho. I was down the shore. Yeah, actually it was, so you know, then you think about that, the fact that you can actually really travel. I would imagine helps you to reset and then really see the world that you're trying to serve. Uh my, am I on track with that Steve was the first sabbatical uh, remind you of your mission?

Yeah. If I was a better man, I'd say yes. But to be honest, uh, we, so my first sabbatical, um, my wife and I traveled, we spent three weeks traveling between Cape Cod and, and Maine up the new England Coast, which we've never seen before. And um, and then we took three weeks and hopped over to Ireland and traveled throughout Ireland for three weeks. Um, but, but it's kind of interesting you ask that because it did, we went to places we've never been before, right? And and saw things and met people and experienced food and culture that we've never never had before and otherwise wouldn't have had the opportunity to do so when you're, when you're like really immersed in it as we did. And um, and, and it it does, it gives you an appreciation for the world, right? Seeing things that the otherwise hadn't seen before and the serendipity of discovering things that you didn't anticipate and you come back with that and and realize, you know, maybe I wasn't thinking directly of our business or the clients, but I came back with this, this energy, that, wow, that was, that was really cool. And it makes me want to go out again and experience more and, and share more and so forth. And we'll be doing that again. We take our trip this this year. So, um, so yeah, I wouldn't say directly thinking about the mission, but, but indirectly it comes back, that's part of that energy that you come back after stepping away and, and disconnecting for a while and getting to experience things.

I think too, as hard as it is for a leader to step away. Um, it's important to do that for the betterment of the organization. One of the things I learned when I took over the finances initially is like you need to be off for two weeks in a row because that gives enough time. Kind of a cycle through some of the financial operations to catch any problems like if I was moving money to an account in the Cayman islands, right. That should come up in those two weeks I'm gone. So having a director away, there's that risk management, but also it teaches the organization how to survive when that director does move on. You know, make sure that you have all the policies and procedures in place. People know how to find passcodes. People know how to deal with different crisis. People know how to talk to the board or to donors. Um, so I think it's, it's really, really hard to step away as a leader. But I think it's, I think it's important for the growth of the organization to practice that from time to time.

It's interesting you mention that, Sandy, because, uh, I mentioned Jeff Russell our our founder and CEO, he instituted this, this program in this policy, but he had never taken his own sabbatical. And, and, uh, and I think it was, I don't know if it was eight years into the business, Nine years in our, our board of directors said, you know, Jeff, you need to take this for a couple of reasons. Number one, you need to step away and recharge. You need to show this example to your staff that it's okay to do this, um, as the, as the, the ultimate leader, as the CEO, um, and, and you need to demonstrate to the business that they can make decisions and run the business without you at the helm. And so Jeff said, well, okay, board, if you're telling me, so, he, he took a great sabbatical himself and checked all those boxes. Um, you know, we, we figured out how to do things with without Jeff, he empowered us to make decisions. Um, and uh, and he showed all of us that, hey, this is, this is something that we all can do and should do. Uh, so yeah, I think the li it's, there's lots of different ways we, as leaders need to show, set examples for the people were, were leading, that's, that's one way of doing so.

Yeah, and you guys have gotten really remote now too, right have, um, like, like most everyone, we, uh, we're based in Boise. Historically, we've always had our, our headquarters and main service center here in Boise. We have three other global offices in Europe, Asia, and Central America, but our US operations were based in Boise um on March 13th 2020 when the whole world turned upside down, we all packed up things, went home and and set up a shop at home and um, with, with intent that, you know, we'll be back in a few months, I think everybody thought that and it didn't happen. And, and as we kind of went through things we realized and the leadership team realized, you know what, we're, we haven't lost clients because of this, we haven't lost staff because of this. We haven't lost any productivity because of this. And oh, by the way, we can greatly reduce some of our operating costs. And so yeah, we've gone to this, uh, this remote model and, and, and it's opened up the, instead of hiring only in Boise or recruiting folks and saying, hey, you gotta move to Boise Idaho, which not everybody may want to do. Um, it's allowed us to, to recruit talent and candidates across the country that we otherwise wouldn't have had access to. So it's, it's been a very, very good thing for our business.

Yeah, we've, we've gone pretty remote as well. I think the challenge has been for the newer staff to kind of build trust and relationships over Zoom. Um, this past week we had an on site retreat and brought everybody in and um, I can already see the difference. Um, you know, we would have done that earlier, but there was all the, you know, variants of Covid, it was hard to get people together still, but I think moving forward, we're gonna be pretty intentional about having regular meetups with everybody just just to have fun. Even doesn't even have to be a work meeting. Um, but I think that's, that's gonna be a big challenge for a lot of non profits moving forward. I think they're gonna have to continue to offer that remote possibility. Like you said, there's upside, you can get talent from anywhere maybe that you didn't have access to before. And we've definitely seen, we've seen affiliates triple their budget, triple the number of people they've served. Our offices tripled. So there's, I think we've still been really successful, but there's, it's not 100% right. Like you still have to put some intention among building those relationships, totally agree.

That's a good one Steve as we, as we sort of come toward the runway of, of of our time together. Um, I was wondering, you know, it sounds great that you can go to an organization like yours for these kinds of services. Um, what kinds of organizations are best served by a company like Jiatsu, and what are not, what ones are not? Now Buddy, you said Jiatsu that time, So Jitasa [laughing] this is gonna be fun. I'll take a shot at you each time. No, it's it's again it's been butchered far worse than that. Yeah, that's that's uh that's funny. So you know, it's it's interesting. We um we've got over 1,000 nonprofit clients across the country um across I think 48 different states um in in in clients in all walks of the nonprofit world, as I mentioned in organizations that range in size from small startups that just got their initial funding and need help getting their feet on the ground and and a foundation put in place to to these large sandy mentioned, you know, National Federations, multi $100 million nonprofits. Um and and in all of them are of course you're talking to the guy who's the sales guy, right. So I think we're the best solution for every non profit out there, but there's there's different reasons why we're a good fit in some of the rural parts of the country for example. Um And we have clients in in very, very small markets where they may not have the pool of candidates with the skill set to do nonprofit accounting, which is very unique in itself. They may not have the pool of candidates. And so in that case the need that were satisfying and whether they're a small nonprofit or larger nonprofit, the need were satisfying. There is is just access to skill set and and talent. Um so so that's a dynamic there now in some of the larger markets, um, New York, DC, San Francisco, those are some of our our three largest markets. We have a lot of clients there, there needs a little bit different, they have lots of access to two skill set and talent, but the cost of the skill set in those markets maybe quite a bit more. And so the fact that we're in Boise Idaho, and with offices in in Costa Rica and Sarajevo, and and Bangkok, the were able to balance out the cost for our skills and the staff that we bring to the table uh in a much more cost effective manner than you would pay for those same skill sets in those, those major markets. So that's, that's more of a, in some cases a business discussion around budget management because they got access to the talent. They just, from a cost effective standpoint, they may be able to do it more um from a cost management standpoint, be able to do so more cost effectively by outsourcing to a firm like Jitasa. So again, it's just different reasons and in different needs because those larger nonprofits, they're, they're big enough they could staff an entire department in many cases. Um, but they would spend a lot more money doing so considering salaries, benefits, payroll taxes, the time involved in recruiting and hiring and training and managing and hopefully retaining uh that staff. Um the business case is completely different when you, when you look at an outsource model. So there's a couple of, I'm not sure if that made sense, but it was a couple of different thoughts about why a non profit and what types of non profits we may be a good fit for. There's different reasons based on the where the nonprofit is and the life of the nonprofit and size and complexity and so forth.

That's really helpful. Sandy any any final thoughts on this uh, before we start to move into the last couple questions. Yeah, I mean, I think another reason, um, and this was kind of part of your answer that a nonprofit would hire Jitasa the redundancy, right? I have an affiliate that their CFO quit unexpectedly and they don't have the skills in the backup. They can do some basic things, but they're in a panic. They need somebody pretty quickly. So if your account manager leaves at Jitasa, no worries, somebody else is gonna pick up that work tomorrow. So there's a consistency in knowing that you always have your back covered. And I think all this really just goes back to nonprofits knowing like what is it that we exist to do and where can we outsource work so that we can concentrate on our core mission and things like HR, Admin, Finances. I think those are great things to outsource to the professionals, experts. Who're doing it all day every day and, and then you, you can rest at night and really concentrate on your programs and I think um to your point that can be hard sometimes for non profits to relinquish that and for boards to understand that. Um but it can really free up a lot of resources in the end for the nonprofit to be more focused on serving people or cleaning up the environment or whatever their core mission is.

Now, that's a great point. And and you know, I have worked in the pharmaceutical industry for years and years and Steve, I worked at an agency that did not take on work that was outside of prescriptions. And the reason for that is we said, look, we don't do anything but this, but we do this all the time every day. And that was the value prop, which was to say there was, there was nothing else on our plate except for our clients in the prescription space. So I I understand that value prop and I think it's a great one.

So Sandy usually get the last question and before I do a read of the final part of any final thoughts that you want to throw to. You're gonna give me a trick question, your hard won on give us a story about an interesting client,

Wow. Well, well I've got this, this one client group that um that does this tremendous work to, to help families avoid homelessness. You know what that. So as you can imagine and Family Promise is a wonderful organization, wonderful client of ours. But we've got clients in all walks of the nonprofit world. The, and I'm gonna probably butcher this name, but we have the American Coleopterists Society. I hope they're not listening right now. But I want to say American Coleopterists Society that they're an organization somewhere in the midwest, I think in Minnesota and they're all about the study of the benefit of beetles. And so, which is again, I think it's called tree probably butchering that they're all about beetles and they're totally in the beetles. And, and, and they established a five oh one C three and they raise money so they can further research into the beetles. It's pretty interesting line of work. And again, we have clients doing all kinds of great things and that's, that's a pretty unique area of pursuit. That is probably the most unique, um, ever heard of, right? Sandy. Yeah. I mean, it just goes to show you right, there's over a million nonprofits in America. There really are. There's so much diversity. So that's cool.

That is, and so Steve traditionally when we close out, we try to find out where people can find both your organization and the best place to get in touch with you. So where can they find the organization? Great. So our website is always the best place, right? Um, our website or URL is www.JITASAGROUP.com as J I T A S A Group dot com. And on that website is information about our services, Our organization. Uh, there's a request to quote button if the client wants or proceeding the organization, the Freudian. I, I think them all as clients, but if the organization wants to learn more and get a price quote, they can contact us through a request to quote. But that's probably the easiest way because we have a sales team that specializes in certain segments of the nonprofit market and depending on the size of the organization, they'll get routed to the most appropriate person to speak with him. But again, it looks like you're on linkedin or is that the best place to reach out if they wanted to find out more about you and me personally? Yeah, linkedin. They can find me on linkedin. There's a lot more exciting things to look out in the world than me though, I'll tell you. But no, if, if anyone wants to reach me LinkedIn of course they can find me Steve Doud D O U D and I'd be happy to talk with anyone anytime. That sounds great.

And Sandy, where can they find you? I know you are getting more active on social than ever. Um, where can they find uh, family promise And where can they follow you? So Family Promise. That's Family Promise dot org. And there's a link there to all of our affiliates if you want to get in contact with a local affiliate. Um, good place to find me is on twitter at Sandra Miniutti and I'm also on LinkedIn at Sandra Miniutti and you're doing a heck of a job on social, you're sharing all the different things that only promises doing and people should be hitting that like button for you. Thank you.

Yeah, so my name is Buddy Scalera and you can find me in all places at Buddy Scalera, be a twitter, Linkedin, or my personal website and you can find us at the five oh one C three Look up dot org website. We hope you enjoyed the 501 companion podcast and consider subscribing so that you never miss an episode. Do you have any questions, show ideas where you're part of a charitable organization that wants to be on the show, visit the Five oh one C three look up dot org website and find our contact information, a complete list of of our previous episodes with me and Sandy and of course the extensive free resources of the Five oh one C three Look up website.

Thank you for joining us on the 501 companion podcast. We hope you join us again next week for the information and inspiration to take your charitable mission to the next level done.


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