“This is the only place where they know they can get a meal.
It was 2006 and only my second month in the non-profit space. I had only known tech start-ups before then, and I had somehow fallen into the world of non-profit finance.
I was walking the school grounds with a charter school principal when they told me how important it was to file the nutrition claims on-time.
“Why is that important to you?", I asked.
“Neil, these kids don’t always get dinner at home. This is the only place where they know they can get a meal.”
This absolutely floored me.
Up until then, I knew nothing about non-profits.
Up until then, I knew nothing about finance and accounting.
Up until then, the non-profit space was a temporary pit stop before jumping back into the tech start-up world.
I've been a non-profit CFO ever since then and I've never looked back.
Neil Shah, NonProfit CFO
Neil has spent the past two decades serving as an outsourced or in-house Chief Financial Officer for non-profit organizations across the United States, organizations with annual budgets ranging from a few million dollars to almost half a billion dollars in annual government and philanthropic revenue.
He has implemented audit/fraud-proof accounting and budgeting processes and procedures, upgraded new financial software systems that reduced manual workloads, and brought boards along the financial roadmap of the organizations through education and story-telling.
He is a partner with leadership teams and is able to provide the financial perspective of the issue while working to understand the non-financial aspects of a situation, helping to find common ground while still ensuring financial sustainability.
He most recently supported Achievement First, a network of 41 public, tuition-free charter schools in New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, as Interim Chief Financial Officer. The network employs 2,500 employees who provide instructional and operational support services to over 15,500 students through an annual operating budget of $400MM, primarily from government dollars.
Neil received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.
Non-Profit Organizations worked with over the years
