This is a live, online event where you’ll participate actively with other attendees! 

Registration for this training is offered on a sliding scale depending on your individual and organizational access to financial resources. Our sliding scale is an intentional effort to distribute resources equitably between organizations and individuals we work with. If your personal or organizational budget allows, please pay the Sustain or Redistribution cost so we can keep registration accessible for leaders and organizations who may not be in the same position. Greater access strengthens us all!

For more information about our public program pricing, click here.

Dealing with money is too often seen as the uninspired but necessary work of resourcing social justice and nonprofit work. At worst, it’s seen as “administrative work” that lives in a silo, separate from the values we strive for in our missions.

In reality, financial knowledge and practices aren’t just technical—they can be transformational and build power, too. But in order to shift our systems and approaches to money to better reflect social justice values, we need to grow access and understanding about finance across our teams.

This three-session training is an opportunity to understand core language and skills about nonprofit finance in an expressly political context where we critically examine how capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy shape nonprofit financial reporting and systems.

We all have something valuable to learn and something useful to contribute to the way we think about resourcing our work, and growing our knowledge and skills around finance is a way to build power within our organizations and in our communities.

Who is this training for?

People working in nonprofits who are new to financial knowledge, who want to grow their general understanding and skills about nonprofit finance including (but not limited to!) people newly holding nonprofit finance roles, program managers, executive directors, and board members. This also includes people who are stepping into new roles, or who may not have a formal position related to managing money. 

We invite anyone working in the nonprofit and social justice space who wants to demystify foundational financial language, concepts, and documents to join us. We especially want to invite folks who are eager to learn these ideas and skills in a political context. This training won’t be a good fit for people looking to workshop their statements in real time or get deep technical assistance.

In this online workshop you will:

• Learn key nonprofit financial terms and be better prepared to use that language in financial discussions within your organization
• Build upon your ability to interpret nonprofit financial statements and identify at least one thing they reveal about an organization’s financial model
• Understand the difference between revenue, expense, and wealth and how they contribute to organizational financial health and program impact
• Recognize how institutionalized and internalized white supremacy culture shapes nonprofit financial reporting practices

What specific skills will you work on?

• Understanding the differences between earned and contributed income, the relationships and systems needed to support them, and how each appears on financial statements
• Understanding how nonprofits are required to report expenses and the impact on our financial systems and organizational priorities
• Beginning to apply key nonprofit financial language and concepts to your own organization
• Becoming familiar with core nonprofit financial statements (the income statement, statement of functional expense, and the balance sheet) and starting to learn how to draw meaning from them

Explore CompassPoint blogs related to this training: 

• 5 ways developing shared knowledge and understanding about money and resources helps organizations build power by CompassPoint 
• Bringing an "Outsider" Perspective to Financial Systems is a Gift by Monica Marie Avery

Get ready to participate!

We strive to make learning about finance fun, interesting, and less intimidating. Our trainings come alive with your participation and willingness to engage. Please be ready to participate in group discussions and share your creativity, questions, and challenges with us.  We’ll share visual and verbal information, play games, and make time for practice and meaning-making in small groups.

This is a multi-day offering. Please make sure you can attend all dates before registering and that you are familiar with our cancellation policy.

Accessibility is very important to us! Closed captioning will be provided. If you require specific accommodations (for example, receiving screen reader-friendly versions of learning materials ahead of time), please notify us at workshops@compasspoint.org two weeks in advance of the scheduled offering so that we can do our best to meet your needs. ASL interpretation is not provided unless requested.

In order to build community and protect confidentiality in the space, we do not record our workshops. If you miss a training date, we cannot provide you with a recording of the training.

Planning on purchasing five or more registrations at once? You’re eligible for a 20% discount off your order total.  For more information on bulk discount eligibility, please visit our FAQ or contact us at workshops@compasspoint.org.