Cash Projections 101: Planning for Crisis

Will your organization have enough cash to cover payroll next month? With the past year’s trying financial reality, our sector’s leaders have had to be agile and adaptive in our financial responsibilities. In this two part series, we will learn how to develop a cash projection spreadsheet that can be updated regularly to look for landmines and dedicate a safe learning space to discuss and strategize simulated common crisis scenarios in nonprofits. Financial statements are important for board members and leadership to analyze the organization’s historical performance, but cash management is critical for day-to-day financial management, and if we’ve learned anything the pandemic—it’s that even if the future may seem unclear, we always have our day-to-day experience to help inform our path forward. Learning about cash projections is also a wonderful method to get familiar and comfortable with financials because cash projections tend to be a more intuitive way of looking at financial information. 

Session I (Tuesday, August 30, 9:00AM - 12:00PM):

Objectives:

Discover 3 methods of projecting future cash flows: mind dump, budget conversion, and hybrid

Analyze common differences between an accrual-based budget and a cash projection

Identify strategies for handling shortfalls

Session II (Wednesday, August 31, 9:00AM - 11:00AM):

Co-Facilitated with Anne King, Executive Director of Ventura College Foundation

Objectives:

Practice analyzing and identifying strategies for different Nonprofit cashflow crisis scenarios

Develop a community for processing and analyzing our financial responsibilities as nonprofit leaders